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Working Paper
Optimal Fiscal Reform with Many Taxes
We study the optimal one-shot tax reform in the standard incomplete markets model where households differ in their wealth, earnings, permanent labor skill, and age. The government can provide transfers by raising tax revenue and has several tax instruments at its disposal: a flat capital income tax, a flat consumption tax, and a non-linear labor income tax. We compute the equilibrium and transitional dynamics for 3888 different tax combinations and find that the optimal fiscal policy funds a transfer that is above 60 percent of GDP through a combination of very high taxes on consumption and ...
Working Paper
Neighborhood dynamics and the distribution of opportunity
This paper uses an overlapping-generations dynamic general equilibrium model of residential sorting and intergenerational human capital accumulation to investigate effects of neighborhood externalities. In the model, households choose where to live and how much to invest toward the production of their child?s human capital. The return on the parent?s investment is determined in part by the child?s ability and in part by an externality from the average human capital in their neighborhood. We use the model to test a prominent hypothesis about the concentration of poverty within ...
Working Paper
On the Distributional Effects of International Tariffs
We provide a quantitative analysis of the distributional effects of the 2018 increase in tariffs by the US and its major trading partners. We build a trade model with incomplete asset markets and households that are heterogeneous in their age, income, wealth, and labor skill. When tariff revenues are used to reduce distortionary taxes on consumption, labor, and capital income, the average welfare loss from the trade war is equivalent to a permanent 0.1 percent reduction in consumption. Much larger welfare losses are concentrated among retirees and low-wealth households, while only wealthy ...
Working Paper
The demand for income tax progressivity in the growth model
This paper examines the degree of income tax progressivity chosen through a simple majority vote in a model with savings. Households have permanent differences with respect to their labor productivity and their discount factors. The government has limited commitment to future policy, so voting is repeated every period. Because the model features mobility within the wealth distribution, the median voter is determined endogenously. In a numerical experiment, the model is initialized to the 1992 U.S. joint distribution of income and wealth as well as several statistics of the federal income tax ...
Working Paper
The Piketty Transition
We study the effects on inequality of a "Piketty transition" to zero growth. In a model with a worker-capitalist dichotomy, we show first that the relationship between inequality (measured as a ratio of incomes for the two types) and growth is complicated; zero growth can raise or lower inequality, depending on parameters. Extending our model to include idiosyncratic wage risk we show that growth has quantitatively negligible effects on inequality, and the effect is negative. Finally, following Piketty?s thought experiment, we study how the transition might occur without declining returns; ...
Working Paper
Optimal Fiscal Reform with Many Taxes
We study the optimal one-shot tax reform in the standard incomplete markets model where households differ in their wealth, earnings, permanent labor skill, and age. The government can provide transfers by raising tax revenue and has several tax instruments at its disposal: a flat capital income tax, a flat consumption tax, and a non-linear labor income tax. The optimal fiscal policy funds a transfer that is nearly 50 percent of GDP through a combination of very high taxes on consumption and capital income. The labor tax schedule has a high average rate but is also moderately progressive. We ...
Journal Article
Why Do Economists Still Disagree over Government Spending Multipliers?
Public debate about the effects of government spending heated up after record-large stimulus packages were enacted to address the fallout of the fi nancial crisis. Almost as noticeable as the discord was the absence of consensus among prominent economists on the issue. While it seems a simple problem to estimate the effect of government spending on output?the size of the government multiplier?it is anything but.
Working Paper
A Note on Aggregating Preferences for Redistribution
The policy predictions of standard heterogeneous agent macroeconomic models are often at odds with observed policies. We use the 2021 General Social Survey to investigate the drivers of individuals' preferences over taxes and redistribution. We find that these preferences are more strongly associated with political identity than with economic status. We discuss the implications for quantitative macroeconomic models with endogenous policy determination.
Journal Article
Income Inequality Matters, but Mobility Is Just as Important
Concerns about rising income inequality are based on comparing income distributions over time. It is important to remember that such distributions are snapshots of a single year, and that the same households do not necessarily appear year after year in the same quintile of the distribution. Paying attention to mobility, as well as inequality, gives us a richer picture of the income possibilities for households over time. We document changes in a measure of income mobility over the past 40 years, a period in which income inequality has increased. We find a modest level of movement through the ...
Working Paper
On the Distributional Effects of International Tariffs
We provide a quantitative analysis of the distributional effects of the 2018 increase in tariffs by the U.S. and its major trading partners. We build a trade model with incomplete asset markets and households that are heterogeneous in their age, income, wealth and labor skill. When tariff revenues are used to reduce labor and capital income taxes and increase transfers, the average welfare loss from the trade war is equivalent to a permanent 0.1 percent reduction in consumption. Much larger welfare losses are concentrated among retirees and low-wealth and low-income workers, while only ...