Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Optimal wealth taxes with risky human capital

Contents:

Author Info

  • Borys Grochulski
  • Tomasz Piskorski

Abstract

We study the structure of optimal wealth and labor income taxes in a Mirrlees economy in which the productivity of labor (i.e., skill) is private, stochastic, and endogenous. Individual agents' skills are determined by their level of human capital. Human capital is not publicly observable and the returns to human capital investment are subject to idiosyncratic shocks. Preferences are not assumed to be additively separable in consumption and human capital investment and, thus, the intertemporal marginal rates of substitution of consumption are private information. We characterize the optimal allocation and a tax system that implements this allocation in equilibrium. The optimal allocation does not satisfy the "reciprocal Euler equation" of Rogerson [Econometrica, 1985], which holds in Mirrlees economies with exogenous skills. The tax system we use in our decentralization of the optimum consists of a wealth tax that is linear in wealth and a labor income tax that depends solely on labor income. The result of Kocherlakota [Econometrica, 2005], establishing the optimality of zero expected marginal wealth tax rate, holds in our model. We show that endogenous skill determination affects the volatility of marginal wealth taxes rather than their expectation. Relative to economies with exogenous skills, the optimal marginal wealth tax rate is more volatile in our endogenous skill economy. Also, we demonstrate the optimality of a wedge in the returns on the two assets present in our economy: At the optimum, the marginal return on human capital investment is strictly larger than the marginal return on physical capital investment.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. 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.
File URL: http://www.richmondfed.org/publications/research/working_papers/2005/wp_05-13.cfm
Download Restriction: no
File URL: http://www.richmondfed.org/publications/research/working_papers/2005/pdf/wp05-13.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond in its series Working Paper with number 05-13.

as in new window
Length:
Date of creation: 2005
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:fip:fedrwp:05-13

Contact details of provider:
Web page: http://www.richmondfed.org/
More information through EDIRC

Order Information:
Email:
Web: http://www.richmondfed.org/publications/

Related research

Keywords: Human capital ; Wealth;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References

References listed on IDEAS
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.:
as in new window
  1. Emmanuel Farhi & Ivan Werning, 2006. "Progressive Estate Taxation," NBER Working Papers 12600, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  2. Davies, James B. & Zeng, Jinli & Zhang, Jie, 2000. "Consumption vs. income taxes when private human capital investments are imperfectly observable," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 1-28, July.
  3. Mirrlees, James A, 1971. "An Exploration in the Theory of Optimum Income Taxation," Review of Economic Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(114), pages 175-208, April.
  4. Narayana R. Kocherlakota, 2003. "Zero Expected Wealth Taxes: A Mirrlees Approach to Dynamic Optimal Taxation," Levine's Bibliography 666156000000000426, UCLA Department of Economics.
  5. Mikhail Golosov & Narayana R. Kocherlakota & Aleh Tsyvinski, 2001. "Optimal indirect and capital taxation," Working Papers 615, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
  6. Heckman, James J, 1976. "A Life-Cycle Model of Earnings, Learning, and Consumption," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 84(4), pages S11-44, August.
  7. Narayana R. Kocherlakota, 2004. "Wedges and Taxes," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(2), pages 109-113, May.
  8. Stefania Albanesi, 2006. "optimal taxation of entrepreneurial capital with private information," 2006 Meeting Papers 310, Society for Economic Dynamics.
  9. Narayana R Kocherlakota, 2005. "Advances in Dynamic Optimal Taxation," Levine's Bibliography 784828000000000518, UCLA Department of Economics.
  10. Stefania Albanesi & Christopher Sleet, 2004. "Dynamic optimal taxation with private information," Discussion Paper / Institute for Empirical Macroeconomics 140, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
  11. Ignacio Palacios-Huerta, 2001. "An Empirical Analysis of the Risk Properties of Human Capital Returns," Working Papers 2001-10, Brown University, Department of Economics.
  12. Michele Boldrin & Ana Montes, 2005. "The Intergenerational State Education and Pensions," Review of Economic Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 72(3), pages 651-664, 07.
  13. Larry E. Jones & Rodolfo E. Manuelli & Peter E. Rossi, 1993. "On the Optimal Taxation of Capital Income," NBER Working Papers 4525, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  14. Rogerson, William P, 1985. "Repeated Moral Hazard," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(1), pages 69-76, January.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
as in new window

Cited by:
  1. da Costa, Carlos E. & Severo, Tiago, 2008. "Education, preferences for leisure and the optimal income tax schedule," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(1-2), pages 113-138, February.
  2. Marek Kapicka & Radim Bohacek, 2007. "Optimal Human Capital Policies," 2007 Meeting Papers 464, Society for Economic Dynamics.
  3. Bas Jacobs & A. Bovenberg, 2010. "Human capital and optimal positive taxation of capital income," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer, vol. 17(5), pages 451-478, October.
  4. Stefania Albanesi, 2006. "optimal taxation of entrepreneurial capital with private information," 2006 Meeting Papers 310, Society for Economic Dynamics.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedrwp:05-13

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Diane Rosenberger).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.