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Working Paper
Unequal Climate Policy in an Unequal World
Hur, Sewon; Carroll, Daniel R.; Belfiori, Elisa (2025-01-31)
We study climate policy in an economy with heterogeneous households, two types of goods (clean and dirty), and a climate externality from the dirty good. Using household expenditure and emissions data, we document that low-income households have higher emissions per dollar spent than high-income households, making a flat carbon tax regressive. We build a model that captures this fact and study climate policies that are neutral with respect to the income distribution. We show that the constrained optimal carbon tax in a heterogeneous economy is heterogeneous: Higher-income households face a ...
Globalization Institute Working Papers , Paper 427

Report
Practical Optimal Income Taxation
Heathcote, Jonathan; Tsujiyama, Hitoshi (2021-07-30)
We review methods used to numerically compute optimal Mirrleesian tax and transfer schedules in heterogeneous agent economies. We show that the coarseness of the productivity grid, while a technical detail in terms of theory, is critical for delivering quantitative policy prescriptions. Existing methods are reliable only when a very fine grid is used. The problem is acute for computational approaches that use a version of the Diamond-Saez implicit optimal tax formula. If using a very fine grid for productivity is impractical, then optimizing within a flexible parametric class is preferable to ...
Staff Report , Paper 626

Working Paper
Optimal Fiscal Policy in Overlapping Generations Models
Garriga, Carlos (2017-05-22)
In this paper, we explore the proposition that the optimal capital income tax is zero using an overlapping generations model. We prove that for a large class of preferences, the optimal capital income tax along the transition path and in steady state is non-zero. For a version of the model calibrated to the US economy, we find that the model could justify the observed rates of capital income taxation for an empirically reasonable intertemporal utility function and a robust demographic structure.
Working Papers , Paper 2017-32

Working Paper
Are Government Bonds Net Wealth or a Liability? ---Optimal Debt and Taxes in an OLG Model with Uninsurable Income Risk
Chien, YiLi; Wen, Yi; Wu, HsinJung (2020-04-08)
The rapidly growing national debt in the U.S. since the 1970s has alarmed and intrigued the academic world. Consequently, the concept of dynamic (in)efficiency in an overlapping generations (OLG) world and the importance of the heterogeneous-agents and incomplete markets (HAIM) hypothesis to justify a high debt-to-GDP ratio have been extensively studied. Two important consensus emerge from this literature: (i) The optimal quantity of public debt is positive—due to insufficient private liquidity to support private saving and investment (see, e.g., Barro (1974), Woodford (1990), and Aiyagari ...
Working Papers , Paper 2020-007

Working Paper
Capital Taxation with Heterogeneous Discounting and Collateralized Borrowing
Biljanovska, Nina; Vardoulakis, Alexandros (2017-05-05)
We study optimal long-run capital taxation in a closed economy with heterogeneity in agents' time-discount factors where borrowing is allowed but restricted by a collateral constraint. Financial frictions distort intertemporal optimization margins and the tax system serves a dual role: first, it is used to finance government consumption; second, it serves to alleviate the distortions arising from the binding collateral constraint. The discrepancy between the private and the social discount factors pushes for a subsidy on capital, while the discrepancy introduced by the collateral constraint ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2017-053

Working Paper
Optimal Time-Consistent Taxation with Default
Karantounias, Anastasios G. (2017-11-01)
We study optimal time-consistent distortionary taxation when the repayment of government debt is not enforceable. The government taxes labor income or issues noncontingent debt in order to finance an exogenous stream of stochastic government expenditures. The government can repudiate its debt subject to some default costs, thereby introducing some state-contingency to debt. We are motivated by the fact that domestic sovereign default is an empirically relevant phenomenon, as Reinhart and Rogoff (2011) demonstrated. Optimal policy is characterized by two opposing incentives: an incentive to ...
FRB Atlanta Working Paper , Paper 2017-12

Working Paper
Doubts about the Model and Optimal Policy
Karantounias, Anastasios G. (2020-07-31)
This paper analyzes optimal policy in setups where both the leader and the follower have doubts about the probability model of uncertainty. I illustrate the methodology in two environments: a) an industry populated with a large firm and many small firms in a competitive fringe, where both types of firms doubt the probability model of demand shocks, and b) a general equilibrium economy, where a policymaker taxes linearly the labor income of a representative household in order to finance an exogenous stream of stochastic spending shocks. The policymaker can distrust the probability model of ...
FRB Atlanta Working Paper , Paper 2020-12

Working Paper
The Determination of Public Debt under both Aggregate and Idiosyncratic Uncertainty
Chien, YiLi; Wen, Yi (2020-08-13)
We use an analytically tractable model to show that the Ramsey planner's decisions to finance stochastic public expenditures under uninsurable idiosyncratic risk implies a departure from tax smoothing. In the absence of state-contingent bonds the government's attempt to balance the competing incentives between tax smoothing and individual consumption smoothing---even at the cost of extra tax distortion---implies a bounded stochastic unit root component in optimal taxes. Nonetheless, a sufficiently high average level of public debt to support individuals’ self-insurance position is welfare ...
Working Papers , Paper 2019-038

Working Paper
The Ramsey Steady-State Conundrum in Heterogeneous-Agent Economies
Chien, YiLi; Wen, Yi (2023-02-06)
In infinite horizon, heterogeneous-agent and incomplete-market models, the existence of an interior Ramsey steady state is often assumed instead of proven. This paper makes two fundamental contributions: (i) We prove that the interior Ramsey steady state assumed by Aiyagari (1995) does not exist in the standard Aiyagari model. Specifically, a steady state featuring the modified golden rule and a positive capital tax is feasible but not optimal. (ii) We design a modified, analytically tractable version of the standard Aiyagari model to unveil the necessary and/or sufficient conditions for the ...
Working Papers , Paper 2022-009

Report
Optimal Income Taxation: Mirrlees Meets Ramsey
Tsujiyama, Hitoshi; Heathcote, Jonathan (2015-01-22)
What structure of income taxation maximizes the social benefits of redistribution while minimizing the social harm associated with distorting the allocation of labor input? Many authors have advocated scrapping the current tax system, which redistributes primarily via marginal tax rates that rise with income, and replacing it with a flat tax system, in which marginal tax rates are constant and redistribution is achieved via non-means-tested transfers. In this paper we compare alternative tax systems in an environment with distinct roles for public and private insurance. We evaluate ...
Staff Report , Paper 507

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