The paper studies non-linear income taxation and linear commodity taxation in a household production context with households differentiated by market and non-market ability. In such a setting, there is an efficiency motive for re-distribution which is independent from the usual equity motive, and operates also when the social planner is indifferent to utility inequality. As a consequence, some of the policy prescriptions applicable to the case in which households differ in market ability only do not hold when households differ also in non-market ability. For instance, re-distribution is not necessarily from high- to low-wage households, and it is not necessarily true that the marginal rate of income tax should be zero for high incomes and positive for low incomes. In some cases, re-distribution may accentuate rather than lessen utility inequality, and can reverse the direction of income inequality relative to the laissez-faire equilibrium. Furthermore, contrary to Atkinson-Stiglitz, it may be optimal to use indirect and direct taxation simultaneously even when the utility function is separable in commodities and labour. Copyright 2003 Blackwell Publishing Inc..
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Christopher F. Baum).
Related research
Keywords:
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)