IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cvs/starer/96-18.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Optimal Taxes Without Commitment

Author

Listed:
  • Benhabib, J.
  • Rustichini, A.

Abstract

In the problem of optimal taxation in an economy with two productive factors, labor and capital, the optimal solution when the government can commit to a sequence of tax rates, has the tax on capital tending to zero in the limit, with all the tax burden on labour. It is well known, however, that this solution is time inconsistent; so if the commitment power is not perfect, this second best tax plan will not be suitable. We model explicitly the tradeoff between the cost of revising the tax plan, and the benefit of the revision.

Suggested Citation

  • Benhabib, J. & Rustichini, A., 1996. "Optimal Taxes Without Commitment," Working Papers 96-18, C.V. Starr Center for Applied Economics, New York University.
    • Handle: RePEc:cvs:starer:96-18
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Chari, V. V. & Christiano, Lawrence J. & Eichenbaum, Martin, 1998. "Expectation Traps and Discretion," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 81(2), pages 462-492, August.
    2. Chari, V V & Christiano, Lawrence J & Kehoe, Patrick J, 1994. "Optimal Fiscal Policy in a Business Cycle Model," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 102(4), pages 617-652, August.
    3. V. V. Chari & Patrick J. Kehoe, 1993. "Sustainable Plans and Mutual Default," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 60(1), pages 175-195.
    4. Marcet, Albert & Marimon, Ramon, 1992. "Communication, commitment, and growth," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 219-249, December.
    5. Judd, Kenneth L., 1985. "Redistributive taxation in a simple perfect foresight model," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 59-83, October.
    6. Stokey, Nancy L., 1991. "Credible public policy," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 15(4), pages 627-656, October.
    7. Jones, Larry E & Manuelli, Rodolfo E & Rossi, Peter E, 1993. "Optimal Taxation in Models of Endogenous Growth," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 101(3), pages 485-517, June.
    8. Chari, V V & Kehoe, Patrick J, 1990. "Sustainable Plans," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(4), pages 783-802, August.
    9. Kemp, Murray C & Long, Ngo Van & Shimomura, Koji, 1993. "Cyclical and Noncyclical Redistributive Taxation," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 34(2), pages 415-429, May.
    10. Chamley, Christophe, 1986. "Optimal Taxation of Capital Income in General Equilibrium with Infinite Lives," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 54(3), pages 607-622, May.
    11. Chamley, Christophe, 1985. "Efficient Taxation in a Stylized Model of Intertemporal General Equilibrium," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 26(2), pages 451-468, June.
    12. Kydland, Finn E & Prescott, Edward C, 1977. "Rules Rather Than Discretion: The Inconsistency of Optimal Plans," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 85(3), pages 473-491, June.
    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. Chang, Roberto, 1998. "Credible Monetary Policy in an Infinite Horizon Model: Recursive Approaches," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 81(2), pages 431-461, August.
    2. Oscar Mauricio VALENCIA ARANA, 2006. "Imperfect Government Insurance and Treasury Securities Markets," Archivos de Economía 2814, Departamento Nacional de Planeación.
    3. Jorge Soares, Marina Azzimonti, Pierre-Daniel Sarte & Pierre-Daniel Sarte & Jorge Soares, 2006. "Optimal Policy and (the Lack of) Time Inconsistency: Insights from Simple Models," Working Papers 06-08, University of Delaware, Department of Economics.
    4. Filippo Occhino, 2005. "Optimal Fiscal Policy over the Business Cycle," Departmental Working Papers 200502, Rutgers University, Department of Economics.
    5. Chari, V.V. & Kehoe, Patrick J., 1999. "Optimal fiscal and monetary policy," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 26, pages 1671-1745, Elsevier.
    6. Andrew Atkeson & V. V. Chari & Patrick J. Kehoe, 1999. "Taxing capital income: a bad idea," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, vol. 23(Sum), pages 3-17.
    7. Christopher Phelan & Ennio Stacchetti, 2001. "Sequential Equilibria in a Ramsey Tax Model," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 69(6), pages 1491-1518, November.
    8. Dai, Darong, 2012. "Comparative Studies on Cooperative Stochastic Differential Game and Dynamic Sequential Game of Economic Maturity," MPRA Paper 44339, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Guo, Jang-Ting & Lansing, Kevin J., 1999. "Optimal taxation of capital income with imperfectly competitive product markets," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 23(7), pages 967-995, June.
    10. Catarina Reis, 2013. "Taxation without commitment," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 52(2), pages 565-588, March.
    11. Rustichini, A., 1998. "Lagrange multipliers in incentive-constrained problems," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 365-380, May.
    12. Martin, Fernando M., 2010. "Markov-perfect capital and labor taxes," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 503-521, March.
    13. Valentinyi, Ákos, 2001. "A tőkejövedelem optimális adóztatása [The optimal taxation of capital income]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(6), pages 459-479.
    14. Selim, Sheikh, 2006. "On Policy Relevance of Ramsey Tax Rules," Cardiff Economics Working Papers E2006/19, Cardiff University, Cardiff Business School, Economics Section, revised Jul 2006.
    15. Carlos Garriga, 2019. "Optimal Fiscal Policy in Overlapping Generations Models," Public Finance Review, , vol. 47(1), pages 3-31, January.
    16. Acemoglu, Daron & Golosov, Mikhail & Tsyvinski, Aleh, 2011. "Political economy of Ramsey taxation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(7-8), pages 467-475, August.
    17. Gian Maria Milesi-Ferretti & Nouriel Roubini, 1995. "Growth Effects of Income and Consumption Taxes: Positive and Normative Analysis," Working Papers 95-18, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, Department of Economics.
    18. Erosa, Andres & Gervais, Martin, 2002. "Optimal Taxation in Life-Cycle Economies," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 105(2), pages 338-369, August.
    19. Lansing, Kevin J., 1999. "Optimal redistributive capital taxation in a neoclassical growth model," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(3), pages 423-453, September.
    20. Ambler, Steve, 1999. "Les modèles à agent représentatif et la politique de taxation optimale," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 75(4), pages 539-557, décembre.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    FISCAL POLICY; CAPITAL; TAXES; TAXATION;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D90 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - General
    • H20 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - General
    • 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:cvs:starer:96-18. 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: Anne Stubing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aenyuus.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.