This paper examines how allowing individuals to emigrate to pay lower taxes changes the optimal non-linear income tax scheme in a Mirrleesian economy. Type-dependent participation constraints are borrowed from contract theory. An individual emigrates if his domestic utility is less than his utility abroad net of migration costs, utilities and costs both depending on productivity. Three social criteria are distinguished according to the agents whose welfare matters. Mobility significantly alters the closed-economy results qualitatively, but also quantitatively as veri.ed by simulations. A curse of the middle-skilled occurs in the first-best. In the second-best, the middle-skilled can support the highest average tax rates and the marginal tax rates can be negative. Moreover, preventing emigration of the highly-skilled is not necessarily optimal.
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Find related papers by JEL classification: H21 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Efficiency; Optimal Taxation H31 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - Household D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information F22 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - International Migration
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Brito, Dagobert L & Oakland, William H, 1977.
"Some Properties of the Optimal Income-Tax,"
International Economic Review,
Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 18(2), pages 407-23, June.
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