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Working Paper
Don’t Tax Capital — Optimal Ramsey Taxation in Heterogeneous Agent Economies with Quasi-Linear Preferences
We build a tractable heterogeneous-agent incomplete-markets model with quasi-linear preferences to address a set of long-standing issues in the optimal Ramsey taxation literature. The tractability of our model enables us to analytically prove the existence of a Ramsey steady state and establish several novel results (i) Depending on the government's capacity to issue debt, there can exist different types of Ramsey steady states but they have the same implications for optimal long-run tax policies. (ii) The optimal capital tax is exclusively zero in a Ramsey steady state regardless of the ...
Working Paper
Should Capital Be Taxed?
We design an infinite-horizon heterogeneous-agents and incomplete-markets model to demonstrate analytically that in the absence of any redistributional effects of government policies, optimal capital tax is zero despite capital overaccumulation under precautionary savings and borrowing constraints. Our result indicates that public debt is a better tool than capital taxation to restore aggregate productive efficiency.
Working Paper
The Determination of Public Debt under both Aggregate and Idiosyncratic Uncertainty
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 Paper
Implementing the Modified Golden Rule? Optimal Ramsey Capital Taxation with Incomplete Markets Revisited
What is the prescription of Ramsey capital taxation in the long run? Aiyagari (1995) addressed the question in a heterogeneous-agent incomplete-markets (HAIM) economy, showing that a positive capital tax should be imposed to implement the so-called modified golden rule (MGR). This paper revisits the long-standing issue. Working with commonly used separable isoelastic preferences, we show (i) the multiplier on the resource constraint of the Ramsey problem must diverge in the limit if a Ramsey steady state exists, (ii) there is no Ramsey steady state when the elasticity of intertemporal ...
Working Paper
Time-Inconsistent Optimal Quantity of Debt
A key property of the Aiyagari-type heterogeneous-agent models is that the equilibrium interest rate of public debt lies below the time discount rate. This fundamental property, however, implies that the Ramsey planner’s fiscal policy may be time-inconsistent because the forward-looking planner would have a dominant incentive to issue plenty of debt such that all households are fully self-insured against idiosyncratic risk. But such a full self-insurance allocation may be paradoxical because, to achieve it, the optimal labor tax rate may approach 100% and aggregate consumption may approach ...
Working Paper
The Politics of Flat Taxes
We study the determination of flat tax systems using a workhorse macroeconomic model of inequality. Our first result is that, despite the multidimensional policy space, equilibrium policies are typically unique (up to a fine grid numerical approximation). The majority voting outcome features (i) zero labor income taxation, (ii) simultaneous use of capital income and consumption taxation, and (iii) generally low transfers. We discuss the role of three factors?the initial heterogeneity in sources of income, the mobility of income and wealth, and the forward-looking aspect of voting?in ...
Working Paper
Implementing the Modified Golden Rule? Optimal Ramsey Capital Taxation with Incomplete Markets Revisited
What is the prescription of Ramsey capital taxation in the long run? Aiyagari (1995) addressed the question in a heterogeneous-agent incomplete-markets (HAIM) economy, showing that a positive capital tax should be imposed to implement the so-called modified golden rule (MGR). In deriving the MGR result, Aiyagari (1995) implicitly assumed that the multiplier on the resource constraint of the Ramsey problem converges to a finite positive value in the limit. We first show that this implicit assumption has a strong implication for the shadow price of Ramsey taxation in the limit: it must go to ...
Working Paper
The Determination of Public Debt under both Aggregate and Idiosyncratic Uncertainty
We use an analytically tractable, heterogeneous-agent incomplete-markets model to show that the Ramsey planner’s decision to finance stochastic public expenditures implies a departure from tax smoothing and an endogeneous mean-reverting force to support positive debt growth despite the government’s precautionary saving motives. Specifically, the government’s attempt to balance the competing incentives between its own precautionary saving (tax smoothing) and households’ precautionary saving (individual consumption smoothing)—even at the cost of extra tax distortion—implies an ...
Working Paper
Time-Inconsistent Optimal Quantity of Debt
A key property of the Aiyagari-type heterogeneous-agent models is that the equilibrium interest rate of public debt lies below the time discount rate. This fundamental property, however, implies that the Ramsey planner’s fiscal policy may be time-inconsistent because the forward-looking planner would have a dominant incentive to issue plenty of debt such that all households are fully self-insured against idiosyncratic risk. But such a full self-insurance allocation may be paradoxical because, to achieve it, the optimal labor tax rate may approach 100% and aggregate consumption may approach ...
Working Paper
The Determination of Public Debt under both Aggregate and Idiosyncratic Uncertainty
We analyze the Ramsey planner's decisions to finance stochastic public expenditures under incomplete insurance markets for idiosyncratic risk. We show analytically that whenever the market interest rate lies below the time discount rate, the Ramsey planner has a dominant incentive to increase debt to meet the private sector's demand for full self-insurance regardless of the relative size of aggregate shocks---suggesting a departure from tax smoothing. However, if a full self-insurance Ramsey allocation is infeasible in the absence of a government debt limit, an interior or bounded Ramsey ...