IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/restud/v90y2023i2p744-780..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Optimal Fiscal Policy in a Model with Uninsurable Idiosyncratic Income Risk

Author

Listed:
  • Sebastian Dyrda
  • Marcelo Pedroni

Abstract

We study optimal fiscal policy in a standard incomplete-markets model with uninsurable idiosyncratic income risk, where a Ramsey planner chooses time-varying paths of proportional capital and labour income taxes, lump-sum transfers (or taxes), and government debt. We find that (1) short-run capital income taxes are effective in providing redistribution since the tax base is relatively unequal and inelastic; (2) an increasing pattern of labour income taxes over time mitigates intertemporal distortions from capital income taxes; (3) the optimal policy increases overall transfers, calibrated initially to the US welfare system, by roughly ; (4) two-thirds of the welfare gains come from redistribution and the remaining third come mostly from insurance; and (5) redistribution also leads to a more efficient allocation of labour via wealth effects on labour supply—lower productivity households can afford to work relatively less.

Suggested Citation

  • Sebastian Dyrda & Marcelo Pedroni, 2023. "Optimal Fiscal Policy in a Model with Uninsurable Idiosyncratic Income Risk," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 90(2), pages 744-780.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:restud:v:90:y:2023:i:2:p:744-780.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/restud/rdac031
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    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:oup:restud:v:90:y:2023:i:2:p:744-780.. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/restud .

    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.