This study develops an income tax competition framework in an overlapping generations economy and examines the economic impact of labor market integration. With two types of labor possessing varied ability levels and a perfectly mobile capital stock, local governments compete for labor and choose the optimal income taxes to maximize social welfare. We demonstrate that public goods can be either over- or under-provided and discuss the equity and efficiency of the optimal policy rules under a nonlinear income taxation scheme. Further, we compare the equilibrium to linear taxation and demonstrate that nonlinear taxation is not necessarily more “equal” or “effective” than linear taxation. Moreover, we compare the equilibrium to that of the classic static model, and find that the nonlinear optimal tax rates could be above or below the first-best tax level in both dynamic and static models, while the public goods can be either over- or under-provided in the dynamic framework but are always under-provided in the static framework.

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 production inefficiency occurs in the model, justifying capital income taxation. For the public good, the paper derives a dynamic analogue of the second-best Samuelson rule, encompassing both inter- and intragenerational redistributive considerations. Furthermore, the usual conditions guaranteeing the efficiency of the first-best Samuelson rule are not sufficient in the present model.

Using an overlapping generations model with skill uncertainty and private savings, we quantify the gains of age-dependent labor income taxation. The total steady-state welfare gain of switching from age-independent to age-dependent nonlinear taxation varies between 2.4% and 4% of GDP. Part of the gain descends from relaxing incentive-compatibility constraints and part is due to capital-accumulation effects. The welfare gain is of about the same magnitude as that which can be achieved by moving from linear to nonlinear income taxation. Finally, the welfare loss from tax-exempting interest income is negligible under an optimal age-dependent labor income tax.

From the 1980s onward income inequality increased in many advanced countries. It is very difficult to account for the rise in income inequality using the standard labour supply/demand explanation. Fiscal redistribution has become less effective in compensating increasing inequalities since the 1990s. Some of the basic features of redistribution can be explained through the optimal tax framework developed by J.A. Mirrlees in 1971. This Element surveys some of the earlier results in linear and nonlinear taxation and produces some new numerical results. Given the key role of capital income in the overall income inequality it also considers the optimal taxation of capital income. It examines empirically the relationship between the extent of redistribution and the components of the Mirrlees framework. The redistributive role of factors such as publicly provided private goods, public employment, endogenous wages in the overlapping generations model and income uncertainty are analysed.

Studies the problem of optimal income taxation in an economy in which income can be falsified. Agents are assumed to have access to a technology that allows them to hide income from public view. As hidden income cannot be taxed, the possibility of income falsification puts a limit on the amount of redistribution that can be implemented in this economy. Given that the process of income concealment is costly, however, limited social insurance can be provided through partial redistribution of revealed income. In this economy, the authors derive Pareto-optimal income redistribution schedules & show how the resulting allocations of consumption can be implemented with a system of nonlinear income taxes. Charts, tables & graphs.

Optimal tax design attempts to resolve a well-known trade-off: namely, that high taxes are bad insofar as they discourage people from working, but good to the degree that, by redistributing wealth, they help insure people against productivity shocks. Until recently, however, economic research on this question either ignored people's uncertainty about their future productivities or imposed strong and unrealistic functional form restrictions on taxes. In response to these problems, the new dynamic public finance was developed to study the design of optimal taxes given only minimal restrictions on the set of possible tax instruments, and on the nature of shocks affecting people in the economy. In this book, Narayana Kocherlakota surveys and discusses this exciting new approach to public finance. An important book for advanced PhD courses in public finance and macroeconomics, The New Dynamic Public Finance provides a formal connection between the problem of dynamic optimal taxation and dynamic principal-agent contracting theory. This connection means that the properties of solutions to principal-agent problems can be used to determine the properties of optimal tax systems. The book shows that such optimal tax systems necessarily involve asset income taxes, which may depend in sophisticated ways on current and past labor incomes. It also addresses the implications of this new approach for qualitative properties of optimal monetary policy, optimal government debt policy, and optimal bequest taxes. In addition, the book describes computational methods for approximate calculation of optimal taxes, and discusses possible paths for future research.