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Capital Income Taxation, Economic Growth, and the Politics of Public Education

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  • Ono, Tetsuo
  • Uchida, Yuki

Abstract

This study considers the politics of public education and its impacts on economic growth and welfare across generations. Public education is funded by taxing the labor income of the working generation and capital income of the retired. We employ probabilistic voting to demonstrate the politics of taxes and expenditure and show that aging results in a shift of the tax burden from the old to the young and a slowdown of economic growth. We then consider three alternative constraints that limit the choice of taxes and/or expenditure: a minimum level of public education expenditure, an upper limit of the capital income tax rate, and a combination of the two. These constraints all create a trade-off between current and future generations in terms of welfare.

Suggested Citation

  • Ono, Tetsuo & Uchida, Yuki, 2018. "Capital Income Taxation, Economic Growth, and the Politics of Public Education," MPRA Paper 86523, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:86523
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    1. Capital Income Taxation, Economic Growth, and the Politics of Public Education
      by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog on 2018-06-15 11:57:20

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    Cited by:

    1. Uchida, Yuki & Ono, Tetsuo, 2021. "Political economy of taxation, debt ceilings, and growth," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Public education; Economic growth; Capital income tax; Political equilibrium;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D70 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - General
    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • H52 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Education

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