IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/econjl/vy2015i583p235-268.html

In Praise of Frank Ramsey's Contribution to the Theory of Taxation

Author

Listed:
  • Joseph E. Stiglitz

Abstract

Frank Ramsey's classic paper "A contribution to the theory of taxation" gave rise to the modern theory of optimal taxation. This paper traces the literature that grew out of Ramsey's 1927 paper and assesses which of its key insights has proven robust. Though the path breaking work of Peter Diamond and James Mirrlees showed that Ramsey's results could be generalized in some important ways, other work showed that the domain of applicability of Ramsey's original insights may be more limited: changes in assumptions about the set of feasible taxes (not allowing certain taxes, or allowing a progressive income tax or non-linear commodity taxes), and in particular about the taxation of pure rents, incorporating more explicitly distributional considerations, and/or recognizing the important ways in which our economy differs from the competitive model underlying Ramsey's analysis all change the optimal structure of commodity taxation in important ways.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Joseph E. Stiglitz, 2015. "In Praise of Frank Ramsey's Contribution to the Theory of Taxation," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 0(583), pages 235-268, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:econjl:v::y:2015:i:583:p:235-268
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/ecoj.2015.125.issue-583
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Firouz Gahvari & Luca Micheletto, 2019. "Heterogeneity, monetary policy, Mirrleesian taxes, and the Friedman rule," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 67(4), pages 983-1018, June.
    2. Chugh, Sanjay K. & Lechthaler, Wolfgang & Merkl, Christian, 2018. "Optimal fiscal policy with labor selection," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 142-189.
    3. Daubanes, Julien Xavier & Lasserre, Pierre, 2023. "How should the use of nonrenewables be taxed under a public budget constraint?," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    4. Valeria Bonis & Luca Spataro, 2018. "Optimal income taxation and migration," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 25(4), pages 867-882, August.
    5. Junichi Minagawa & Thorsten Upmann, 2018. "Optimal taxation under a consumption target," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 50(4), pages 663-676, April.
    6. Bastani, Spencer & Blomquist, Sören & Micheletto, Luca, 2016. "Optimal commodity taxation with varying quality of goods," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(1), pages 89-100.
    7. Diego Fernández Felices & Isidro Guardarucci & Jorge Puig, 2016. "El Impuesto al Valor Agregado en Argentina. Consideraciones sobre su incidencia distributiva y propuestas de reforma," Revista Actualidad Económica, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Facultad de Ciencias Económicas, Instituto de Economía y Finanzas, vol. 26(90), pages 29-38, Sept-Dic.
    8. Berliant, Marcus & Gouveia, Miguel, 2022. "On the Political Economy of Nonlinear Income Taxation," MPRA Paper 113140, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Gahvari, Firouz & Micheletto, Luca, 2016. "Capital income taxation and the Atkinson–Stiglitz theorem," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 147(C), pages 86-89.
    10. José Mª Durán-Cabré & Julien Daubanes & Pierre-Yves Yanni & Xavier Oberson & Uwe Thuemmel, 2019. "The Taxation of Robots / La tributación de los robots / La tributació dels robots en sistemes de salut descentralitzats," IEB Reports ieb_report_2_2019, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    11. Torben M. Andersen & Marias H. Gestsson, 2022. "Is full annuitization socially optimal?," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 135(2), pages 199-217, March.
    12. Torben M. Andersen, 2020. "Taxation of capital income in overlapping generations economies," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 22(5), pages 1245-1261, September.
    13. Luca Spataro & Tommaso Crescioli, 2024. "How much capital should be taxed? A review of the quantitative and empirical literature," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(4), pages 1399-1436, September.
    14. Albertsen, Lau H. & Andersen, Mads & Boscán, Luis R. & Santos, Athila Q., 2020. "Implementing dynamic electricity taxation in Denmark," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    15. Kristjánsson, Arnaldur Sölvi, 2016. "Optimal Taxation with Endogenous Return to Capital," Memorandum 06/2016, Oslo University, Department of Economics.
    16. Helmuth Cremer & Firouz Gahvari, 2017. "Restoring Ramsey tax lessons to Mirrleesian tax settings: Atkinson–Stiglitz and Ramsey reconciled," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 49(1), pages 11-35, June.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory
    • H2 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue
    • H21 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Efficiency; Optimal Taxation

    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:wly:econjl:v::y:2015:i:583:p:235-268. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/resssea.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.