IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cor/louvco/2007095.html

Unequal wages for equal utilities

Author

Listed:
  • CREMER, Helmuth
  • PESTIAU, Pierre

    (Université catholique de Louvain (UCL). Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE))

  • RACIONERO, Maria

Abstract

When educational policy is supplemented by a redistributive income tax, and when individualsdiffer in their ability to benefit from education, the optimal policy is typically rather regressive.Resources are concentrated on the most able individuals in order to get a "cake" as big aspossible to share among individuals through income taxation. In this paper we put forwardanother reason to push for regressive education. It is not linked to heterogeneity in innate ability to benefit from education but to pervasive non-convexities that arise in the optimal income tax problem when individual productivities are endogenous. For simplicity we assume a lineareducation technology and a given total education budget. To give the equal wage outcome thebest chance to emerge, we also assume that individuals have identical learning abilities.Nevertheless, it turns out that in the first-best wage inequality is always preferable to wageequality. Even more surprisingly, this conclusion remains valid in the second-best (unless adhoc restriction on the feasible degree of a wage differentiation are imposed). This is in spite ofthe fact that wage equalization would eliminate any need for distortionary income taxation.

Suggested Citation

  • CREMER, Helmuth & PESTIAU, Pierre & RACIONERO, Maria, 2007. "Unequal wages for equal utilities," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2007095, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    • Handle: RePEc:cor:louvco:2007095
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://sites.uclouvain.be/core/publications/coredp/coredp2007.html
    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. Bastani, Spencer & Blumkin, Tomer & Micheletto, Luca, 2015. "Optimal wage redistribution in the presence of adverse selection in the labor market," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 41-57.
    2. Efthymios Athanasiou, 2012. "Endogenous productivity and equality of opportunity," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 39(1), pages 59-89, June.
    3. Helmuth Cremer & Philippe Donder & Pierre Pestieau, 2010. "Education and social mobility," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 17(4), pages 357-377, August.
    4. Jan ŠIROKÝ & Anna KOVÁŘOVÁ & Kateřina RANDOVÁ, 2012. "The role of the value added tax on foodstuffs in the consumer basket," Agricultural Economics, Czech Academy of Agricultural Sciences, vol. 58(8), pages 387-395.
    5. Helmuth Cremer & Pierre Pestieau & Kerstin Roeder, 2015. "United but (un)equal: human capital, probability of divorce, and the marriage contract," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 28(1), pages 195-217, January.
    6. Huang Minan & Chen Bingzheng & Deng Yinglu, 2013. "Welfare Effects of Developing the Reverse Mortgage Market in China: An Individual and Social Perspective," Asia-Pacific Journal of Risk and Insurance, De Gruyter, vol. 8(1), pages 27-55, December.
    7. Eric Stephens, 2012. "Teach a man to fish? Education vs. optimal taxation," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 45(4), pages 1700-1727, November.
    8. Leung, Tin Cheuk & Yazici, Hakki, 2011. "On the Optimal Skill Distribution in a Mirrleesian Economy," MPRA Paper 32596, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • H20 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - General
    • I20 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - General
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement

    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:cor:louvco:2007095. 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: Alain GILLIS (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/coreebe.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.