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A Note on Optimal Taxation, Status Consumption, and Unemployment

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Existing research on optimal taxation in economies with status-driven relative consumption assumes that the labor market is competitive, despite the fact that real world labor markets are typically characterized by involuntary unemployment. We show how the marginal tax policy ought to be modified to simultaneously account for positional consumption externalities and equilibrium unemployment, and find that interaction effects between these two market failures are crucial determinants of the marginal tax structure. In certain cases, the policy incentive to tax away positional externalities vanishes completely, and negative positional externalities may even lead to lower marginal taxation, under involuntary unemployment.

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  • Aronsson, Thomas & Johansson-Stenman, Olof, 2020. "A Note on Optimal Taxation, Status Consumption, and Unemployment," Umeå Economic Studies 983, Umeå University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:umnees:0983
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Optimal taxation; relative consumption; externalities; unemployment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D62 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Externalities
    • D90 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - General
    • H21 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Efficiency; Optimal Taxation
    • H23 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Externalities; Redistributive Effects; Environmental Taxes and Subsidies
    • J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search

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