The MIT Faculty has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters. Pension benefit rules depend on individual history far more than taxes do, and age plays a much larger role in pension determination than in tax determination. Apart from some simulation studies, theoretical studies of optimal tax design typically contain neither a mandatory pe...

In models with a representative infinitely lived household, modern versions of tax smoothing imply that the steady-state of government debt should follow a random walk. This is unlikely to be the case in OLG economies, where, the equilibrium interest rate may differ from the policy-maker’s rate of time preference such that it may be optimal to reduce debt today to reduce distortionary taxation ...

Viewing local finances under the approach to private-public consumption complementarity, we conclude that foot voting and tax competition become extinct when the (capital) tax structure across jurisdictions is the one forging close ties between the burgher and his/her jurisdiction. Feeling the burgher attached to the local public goods offered and to the local business activity, prevents labor ...

Using the self-selection approach to tax analysis within an OLG framework, the paper examines optimal non-linear labour and capital income taxation and the provision of a durable public good. Under endogenous wages, the marginal tax rules depend on the influence of the tax instruments on self-selection and on the income earning abilities of the households. In particular, we found that productio...

This paper examines the utility gains and losses induced by changes in capital taxation in an economy with heterogeneous discount factors. A Ramsey equilibrium, where households earn wage income and accumulate capital, but may not borrow against future wage income, provides a natural setting for this analysis. In the short run, the agents with little or no capital gain from increased transfers ...

This paper investigates the optimal taxation path of a non-renewable resource in the presence of an imperfect substitute renewable resource. We present an optimal growth model and characterize the social optimum and the decentralized equilibrium. We show that the economy gradually reduces the share of non-renewable resource and converges to a steady state in which it uses only the renewable res...

We contrast e¤ects of taxing non-renewable resources with the e¤ects of traditional capital taxes and investment subsidies in an endogenous growth model. In a simple framework we demonstrate that when non-renewable resources are a necessary input in the sector where growth is ultimately generated, interest income taxes and investment subsidies can no longer a¤ect the long-run growth rate, where...