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Taxation and Excess Burden: A Life-Cycle Perspective

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Author Info
E. John Driffill
Harvey S. Rosen

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Abstract

A lifetime perspective is appropriate in assessing the welfare implications of government tax policies. Although a number of attempts have been made to ex- amine the excess burden of taxation in life-cycle models, these have tended to ignore the role of human capital accumulation and/or the leisure-income choice. In this paper, we do numerical simulations with a model that takes both of these phenomena into account. We find that under reasonable assumptions, the failure to take into account distortions of human capital decisions produces substantial underestimates of the excess burden of income taxation. In addition, allowing for the endogeneity of human capital increases the efficiency of a personal consumption tax relative to that of an equal yield income tax.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 0698.

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Date of creation: Jan 1984
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:0698

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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.:
  1. Blinder, Alan S & Weiss, Yoram, 1976. "Human Capital and Labor Supply: A Synthesis," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 84(3), pages 449-72, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  2. Atkinson, A. B. & Stiglitz, J. E., 1976. "The design of tax structure: Direct versus indirect taxation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 6(1-2), pages 55-75. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  3. Lawrence H. Summers, 1981. "Tax Policy in a Life Cycle Model," NBER Working Papers 0302, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. Haley, William J, 1976. "Estimation of the Earnings Profile from Optimal Human Capital Accumulation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 44(6), pages 1223-38, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  5. Auerbach, Alan J., 1979. "A brief note on a non-existent theorem about the optimality of uniform taxation," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 3(1), pages 49-52. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. Rosen, Sherwin, 1976. "A Theory of Life Earnings," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 84(4), pages S45-67, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  7. Levhari, David & Weiss, Yoram, 1974. "The Effect of Risk on the Investment in Human Capital," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 64(6), pages 950-63, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  8. Rosen, Harvey S, 1978. "The Measurement of Excess Burden with Explicit Utility Functions," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 86(2), pages S121-35, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  9. Brown, Charles, 1976. "A Model of Optimal Human-Capital Accumulation and the Wages of Young High School Graduates," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 84(2), pages 299-316, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  10. Ryder, Harl E & Stafford, Frank P & Stephan, Paula E, 1976. "Labor, Leisure and Training over the Life Cycle," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 17(3), pages 651-74, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  11. Levhari, David & Sheshinski, Eytan, 1972. "Lifetime Excess Burden of a Tax," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 80(1), pages 139-47, Jan.-Feb.. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  12. Diamond, P. A. & McFadden, D. L., 1974. "Some uses of the expenditure function in public finance," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(1), pages 3-21, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  13. Arnold Harberger, 1964. "Taxation, Resource Allocation, and Welfare," NBER Chapters, in: The Role of Direct and Indirect Taxes in the Federal Reserve System, pages 25-80 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!]
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(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.)

  1. Cruz Echevarria & Amaia Iza, 2000. "Income Taxation and Finite Horizons in a Human Capital Model," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer, vol. 7(6), pages 665-689, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Douglas W. Elmendorf & Miles S. Kimball, 1996. "Taxation of labor income and the demand for risky assets," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 96-32, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.). [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  3. Christopher Taber, 2002. "Tax Reform and Human Capital Accumulation: Evidence from an Empirical General Equilibrium Model of Skill Formation," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, Berkeley Electronic Press, vol. 0(1). [Downloadable!]
  4. Annette Alstadsæter, Ann-Sofie Kolm and Birthe Larsen, 2005. "Tax Effects on Unemployment and the Choice of Educational Type," Discussion Papers 419, Research Department of Statistics Norway. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  5. Geir Haakon Bjertnæs, 2001. "Optimal Combinations of Income Tax and Subsidies for Education," Discussion Papers 313, Research Department of Statistics Norway. [Downloadable!]
  6. George R. Zodrow, 2007. "Should Capital Income be Subject to Consumption-Based Taxation?," Working Papers 0715, Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation. [Downloadable!]
  7. Bovenberg, A.L. & Jacobs, B., 2001. "Redistribution and education subsidies are siamese twins," Discussion Paper 82, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  8. Annette Alstadsæter & Ann-Sofie Kolm & Birthe Larsen, 2005. "Tax Effects, Search Unemployment, and the Choice of Educational Type," CESifo Working Paper Series CESifo Working Paper No. , CESifo Group Munich. [Downloadable!]
  9. Cruz Angel Echevarría, 2003. "Life Expectancy, Schooling Time and Endogenous Growth," DFAEII Working Papers 200211, University of the Basque Country - Department of Foundations of Economic Analysis II. [Downloadable!]
  10. Alstadsæter, Annette & Kolm, Anne-Sofie & Larsen, Birthe, 2005. "Money or Joy," Working Papers 23-2005, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
  11. Lance Lochner & Alexander Monge-Naranjo, 2002. "Human Capital Formation with Endogenous Credit Constraints," NBER Working Papers 8815, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  12. Ellen R. McGrattan, 1991. "The macroeconomic effects of distortionary taxation," Discussion Paper / Institute for Empirical Macroeconomics 37, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  13. Berthold Wigger, 2000. "On the Intergenerational Incidence of Wage and Consumption Taxes," CESifo Working Paper Series CESifo Working Paper No. , CESifo Group Munich. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
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