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The Excess Burden of Government Indecision

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  • Francisco J. Gomes
  • Laurence J. Kotlikoff
  • Luis M. Viceira

Abstract

Governments are known for procrastinating when it comes to resolving painful policy problems. Whatever the political motives for waiting to decide, procrastination distorts economic decisions relative to what would arise with early policy resolution. In so doing, it engenders excess burden. This paper posits, calibrates, and simulates a life cycle model with earnings, lifespan, investment return, and future policy uncertainty. It then measures the excess burden from delayed resolution of policy uncertainty. The first uncertain policy we consider concerns the level of future Social Security benefits. Specifically, we examine how an agent would respond to learning in advance whether she will experience a major Social Security benefit cut starting at age 65. We show that having to wait to learn materially affects consumption, saving, and portfolio decisions. It also reduces welfare. Indeed, we show that the excess burden of government indecision can, in this instance, range as high as 0.6 percent of the agent's economic resources. This is a significant distortion in of itself. It's also significant when compared to other distortions measured in the literature. The second uncertain policy we consider concerns marginal tax rates. We obtain similar results once we adjust for the impact of tax rates on income.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 12859.

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Date of creation: Jan 2007
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:12859

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Cited by:
  1. Pástor, Luboš & Veronesi, Pietro, 2010. "Uncertainty about Government Policy and Stock Prices," CEPR Discussion Papers 7897, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  2. Laurence J. Kotlikoff & Ben Marx & Pietro Rizza, 2006. "Americans' Dependency on Social Security," NBER Working Papers 12696, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  3. Luigi Siciliani, 2007. "Paying for performance with altruistic or motivated providers," Discussion Papers 07/33, Department of Economics, University of York.
  4. Harrison, Mark, 2011. "Secrecy, Fear and Transaction Costs: The Business of Soviet Forced Labour in the Early Cold War," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 46, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
  5. Pástor, Luboš & Veronesi, Pietro, 2011. "Political Uncertainty and Risk Premia," CEPR Discussion Papers 8601, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  6. Alex Armstrong & Nick Draper & André Nibbelink & Ed Westerhout, 2007. "Fiscal prefunding in response to demographic uncertainty," CPB Discussion Paper 85, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.

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