We study optimal taxation of savings in an economy where agents face self-control problems, and we allow the severity of self-control to change over the life cycle. We focus on quasi-hyperbolic discounting with constant elasticity of intertemporal substitution utility functions and linear Markov equilibria. We derive explicit formulas for optimal taxes that implement the efficient (commitment) ...

1. Judd (1985) and Chamley (1986) obtained results that in the long run, the optimal capital income taxation should be zero. And they claim that the result does not depend on whether government has the ability to borrow or not. 2. Lansing in this paper gave a counterexample under which the optimal capital income tax rate is non-zero in the long run when the government does not have the ability ...

Ramsey models of fiscal and monetary policy featuring time-separable preferences and a fixed supply of capital predict highly volatile inflation with no serial correlation. In this paper, we show that an otherwise-standard Ramsey model that incorporates capital accumulation and habit persistence predicts highly persistent inflation. The result depends on increases in either the ability to smoot...

This paper studies how optimal wage tax conclusions from the classic two-period life cycle model of human capital accumulation are affected by endogenizing the number of taxpaying workers. In the absence of a corrective policy, young individuals underinvest in human capital from a social perspective because tax premiums for transfers to nonworkers are not actuarially adjusted downward for human...

In a model with ex-ante homogenous households, income risk and a general earnings function, we derive an optimal labor tax rate and optimal education subsidies. It turns out that the distinction of risk-increasing or risk-decreasing education does not have much effect on the optimal tax rate, but is crucial for optimal education subsidies. Moreover, an optimal education policy allows for better...

This paper models a capital-exporting country that encounters difficulties in taxing foreignsource income, due to tax evasion problems. The paper compares the country’s optimal effective tax rates on the income from capital invested at home and abroad (including penalties levied on detected tax evaders). It finds that tax evasion abroad does not provide a justification for a relatively low effe...

We investigate a game of delegated portfolio management such as hedge funds featuring risk-neutrality, hidden types, and hidden actions. We show that capital gain tax plays the decisive role in solving the incentive problem. We characterize the constrained optimal fee scheme and capital gain tax rate; the fee after taxation must be linear and affected by gains and losses in a low-powered and sy...