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Income Taxation, Productive Government Expenditure and Stochastic Growth: On Conditions for an Optimal Policy and the Role of the Risk Premium

  • Christiane Clemens
Published/Copyright: June 29, 2005
Topics in Macroeconomics
From the journal Topics in Macroeconomics Volume 5 Issue 1

Abstract

This paper employs a stochastic endogenous growth model with productive government expenditure to analyze the macroeconomic effects of income taxation. We demonstrate that in the presence of capital and income risk the impact of taxation on consumption choice as well as on economic growth is ambiguous as it affects the mean as well as the variance of disposable income. It is possible to solve for welfare-maximizing policies, but contrary to the deterministic framework, welfare-, consumption- and growth-maximizing policies do not necessarily coincide. Multiple solutions for optimal tax rates can be found. The risk premium turns out to be a key factor in explaining the effects. In fact, growth-maximizing policies also maximize the risk premium. This may entail too much risk for risk-averse agents, thereby minimizing welfare and the propensity to consume.

Keywords: Stochastic growth; productive government expenditure; precautionary saving; optimal taxation
Published Online: 2005-06-29

©2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston

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https://doi.org/10.2202/1534-5998.1079
Keywords for this article
Stochastic growth; productive government expenditure; precautionary saving; optimal taxation

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Advances Article
  2. Comparing Wealth Effects: The Stock Market versus the Housing Market
  3. Optimal Time-Consistent Taxation with International Mobility Of Capital
  4. The Great Inflation of the Seventies: What Really Happened?
  5. Contributions Article
  6. The Effects of Industrialization on Education and Youth Labor in Indonesia
  7. A Closed Form Ramsey Saddle Path
  8. Indeterminacy, Stabilization Policy and Returns to Scale: A Re-Investigation
  9. Hiccups for HIPCs? Implications of Debt Relief for Fiscal Sustainability and Monetary Policy
  10. The Effects of Reducing Firing Costs in Spain: A Lost Opportunity?
  11. The Buffer-Stock Consumption Model with Endogenous Income Shifts
  12. Capital-Skill Complementarity and Rigid Relative Wages: Inference from the Business Cycle
  13. Indeterminacy and the Stability Puzzle in Non-Convex Economies
  14. The Underestimated Virtues of the Two-sector AK Model
  15. How Well Does the New Keynesian Sticky-Price Model Fit the Data?
  16. Exchange Rates and Fiscal Adjustments: Evidence from the OECD and Implications for the EMU
  17. Changing Technology Trends, Transition Dynamics, and Growth Accounting
  18. The 3-Equation New Keynesian Model --- A Graphical Exposition
  19. Topics Article
  20. Transparency and Reputation: The Publication of Central Bank Forecasts
  21. Technology Adoption in Follower Countries: With or Without Local R&D Activities?
  22. Non-Scale Models of R&D-based Growth: The Market Solution
  23. Parameter Instability, Model Uncertainty and the Choice of Monetary Policy
  24. Job Insecurity, Reallocation and Technological Innovation in a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
  25. The Scope of Monetary Policy Actions Authorized Under the Federal Reserve Act
  26. Roads versus Schooling: Growth Effects of Government Choices
  27. Matching Up the Data on Education with Economic Growth Models
  28. An Active Public Investment Rule and the Downsizing Experience in the US: 1960-2000
  29. Exchange Rate Regimes and Financial Dollarization: Does Flexibility Reduce Currency Mismatches in Bank Intermediation?
  30. U.S. Regional Income and Technology: A Unit-Root and Cointegration Study
  31. Firm Entry with an Imperfect Labor Market
  32. Fiscal Policy and the Price Level
  33. Income Taxation, Productive Government Expenditure and Stochastic Growth: On Conditions for an Optimal Policy and the Role of the Risk Premium
  34. Income and Wealth Distributions Along the Business Cycle: Implications from the Neoclassical Growth Model
  35. Ramsey-Friedman Optimality with Banking Time
  36. Optimal Fiscal Policy with Rationing in the Labor Market
  37. The Monetary Policy Committee's Reaction Function: An Exercise in Estimation
  38. Policy Effects in the Post Boom U.S. Economy
  39. Human Capital and Growth: An Alternative Accounting
  40. Growing Old Together: Firm Survival and Employee Turnover
  41. Vertical Diversity, Communication Gap and Equilibrium Growth
  42. Should Developing Countries Strengthen their Intellectual Property Rights?
  43. Capital Accumulation in Private Information Economies
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