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The Laffer Curve In An Incomplete-Markets Economy

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  • Patrick Fève

    (Toulouse School of Economics)

Abstract

This paper examines quantitative issues related to the Laffer curve in a neoclassical growth model with endogenous labor supply and complete or incomplete financial markets where distortionary taxes on labor, capital and consumption are used to finance government consumption, lump-sum transfers and debt repayments. We show that the shape of the Laffer curve related to each type of taxation differs a lot for the two model versions, especially when public debt is adjusted to fulfill the government budget constraint. In the incomplete markets setup, a given level of the fiscal revenues can be associated to three different levels of labor or capital income taxes. This finding occurs because the tax rates change non monotonically with public debt when markets are incomplete.

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  • Patrick Fève, 2012. "The Laffer Curve In An Incomplete-Markets Economy," 2012 Meeting Papers 215, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    • Handle: RePEc:red:sed012:215
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    Cited by:

    1. Shuhei Takahashi & Tomoyuki Nakajima, 2016. "Consumption Taxes and Divisibility of Labor under Incomplete Markets," 2016 Meeting Papers 797, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    2. Heer, Burkhard & Polito, Vito & Wickens, Michael R., 2020. "Population aging, social security and fiscal limits," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).
    3. Hans A. Holter & Dirk Krueger & Serhiy Stepanchuk, 2019. "How do tax progressivity and household heterogeneity affect Laffer curves?," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 10(4), pages 1317-1356, November.
    4. Christine Ma & Chung Tran, 2016. "Fiscal Space under Demographic Shift," ANU Working Papers in Economics and Econometrics 2016-642, Australian National University, College of Business and Economics, School of Economics.
    5. F Guedes de Oliveira & L Costa, 2015. "The VAT Laffer Curve and the Business Cycle in the EU27: An Empirical Approach," Economic Issues Journal Articles, Economic Issues, vol. 20(2), pages 29-43, September.
    6. Tomoyuki Nakajima & Shuhei Takahashi, 2020. "The Effectiveness of Consumption Taxes and Transfers as Insurance Against Idiosyncratic Risk," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 52(2-3), pages 505-530, March.
    7. Guner, Nezih & Lopez-Daneri, Martin & Ventura, Gustavo, 2016. "Heterogeneity and Government revenues: Higher taxes at the top?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 69-85.
    8. Kotamäki Mauri, 2017. "Laffer Curves and Home Production," Nordic Tax Journal, Sciendo, vol. 2017(1), pages 59-69, January.
    9. Juraj Gazda & Viliam Kováč & Peter Tóth & Peter Drotár & Vladimír Gazda, 2017. "Tax optimization in an agent-based model of real-time spectrum secondary market," Telecommunication Systems: Modelling, Analysis, Design and Management, Springer, vol. 64(3), pages 543-558, March.

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    JEL classification:

    • E60 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - General

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