IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aejmac/v16y2024i2p217-49.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Inequality, Taxation, and Sovereign Default Risk

Author

Listed:
  • Minjie Deng

Abstract

Income inequality and worker migration significantly affect sovereign default risk. Governments often impose progressive taxes to reduce inequality, which redistribute income but discourage labor supply and induce emigration. Reduced labor supply and a smaller high-income workforce erode the current and future tax base, reducing government's ability to repay debt. I develop a sovereign default model with endogenous nonlinear taxation and heterogeneous labor to quantify this effect. In the model, the government chooses the optimal combination of taxation and debt, considering its impact on workers' labor and migration decisions. Income inequality accounts for one-fifth of the average US state government spread.

Suggested Citation

  • Minjie Deng, 2024. "Inequality, Taxation, and Sovereign Default Risk," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 16(2), pages 217-249, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aejmac:v:16:y:2024:i:2:p:217-49
    DOI: 10.1257/mac.20210133
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/mac.20210133
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://doi.org/10.3886/E193141V1
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/mac.20210133.appx
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/mac.20210133.ds
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1257/mac.20210133?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Michael Schwert, 2017. "Municipal Bond Liquidity and Default Risk," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 72(4), pages 1683-1722, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Butler, Alexander W. & Yi, Hanyi, 2022. "Aging and public financing costs: Evidence from U.S. municipal bond markets," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 211(C).
    2. Jerch, Rhiannon & Kahn, Matthew E. & Lin, Gary C., 2023. "Local public finance dynamics and hurricane shocks," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).
    3. Chunjing Wang & Jinming Qu, 2020. "Analysis of the Pro-cyclical Behavior of Credit Spread in Chinese Bond Market," Journal of Applied Finance & Banking, SCIENPRESS Ltd, vol. 10(4), pages 1-8.
    4. Thomas Luke Spreen & Ed Gerrish, 2022. "Taxes and tax‐exempt bonds: A literature review," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(4), pages 767-808, September.
    5. Huixin Bi & W. Blake Marsh, 2020. "Flight to Liquidity or Safety? Recent Evidence from the Municipal Bond Market," Research Working Paper RWP 20-19, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
    6. Hanming Fang & Yongqin Wang & Xian Wu, 2020. "The Collateral Channel of Monetary Policy: Evidence from China," NBER Working Papers 26792, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Larcker, David F. & Watts, Edward M., 2020. "Where's the greenium?," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(2).
    8. Matteo Binfarè & Kyle Zimmerschied, 2024. "The Role of Debt in Financing Higher Education," NBER Chapters, in: Financing Institutions of Higher Education, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Bourdeau-Brien, Michael & Kryzanowski, Lawrence, 2020. "Natural disasters and risk aversion," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 177(C), pages 818-835.
    10. Shashank Bansal & Satya Prakash Mani & Himanshu Gupta & Shipra Maurya, 2023. "Sustainable development of the green bond markets in India: Challenges and strategies," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(1), pages 237-252, February.
    11. Grey Gordon & Pablo Guerrón-Quintana, 2021. "Public Debt, Private Pain: Regional Borrowing, Default, and Migration," Working Paper 21-13, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
    12. Xiao-Wan Jiang, 2019. "The Impact of Government Intervention on Municipal Bond Liquidity Premium: Evidence from China," Applied Economics and Finance, Redfame publishing, vol. 6(3), pages 79-86, May.
    13. Eymen Errais, 2019. "What Drives Municipalities Default Risk?," International Journal of Economics and Finance, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 11(3), pages 49-57, March.
    14. Albert Lee Chun & Ethan Namvar & Xiaoxia Ye & Fan Yu, 2019. "Modeling Municipal Yields With (and Without) Bond Insurance," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(8), pages 3694-3713, August.
    15. Yuanxin Liu & FengYun Li & Xinhua Yu & Jiahai Yuan & Dong Zhou, 2018. "Assessing the Credit Risk of Corporate Bonds Based on Factor Analysis and Logistic Regress Analysis Techniques: Evidence from New Energy Enterprises in China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(5), pages 1-21, May.
    16. Tran, Nhu & Uzmanoglu, Cihan, 2023. "Reprint of: COVID-19, lockdowns, and the municipal bond market," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    17. Murphy, Austin, 2018. "Bond pricing in the biggest city bankruptcy in history: The effects of state emergency management laws on default risk," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 106-117.
    18. Jess N. Cornaggia & Kimberly J. Cornaggia & Ryan D. Israelsen, 2020. "Where the Heart Is: Information Production and the Home Bias," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(12), pages 5532-5557, December.
    19. Christine Cuny & Omri Even‐Tov & Edward M. Watts, 2021. "From Implicit to Explicit: The Impact of Disclosure Requirements on Hidden Transaction Costs," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(1), pages 215-242, March.
    20. Javadi, Siamak & Mollagholamali, Mohsen, 2018. "Debt market illiquidity and correlated default risk," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 266-273.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • F34 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - International Lending and Debt Problems
    • H21 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Efficiency; Optimal Taxation
    • H23 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Externalities; Redistributive Effects; Environmental Taxes and Subsidies
    • H74 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Borrowing
    • J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
    • R23 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:aejmac:v:16:y:2024:i:2:p:217-49. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.