IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ecm/nasm04/539.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Investment in Human Capital in a Macrodynamic Framework: Redistributive Taxation, Public Debt and Welfare

Author

Listed:
  • Leandro Gonçalves do Nascimento

Abstract

Efficient investment in human capital is a subject of great concern among economists. By means of an overlapping-generations macrodynamic model with credit constraints, imperfect insurance and exogenous labor supply, we appraise inefficiencies related to misinvestment in human capital and propose a simple scheme of redistributive taxation to mitigate them. A numerical simulation is calibrated in order to match stylized facts of the quite unequal Brazilian economy and shows that, in steady-state, with a flat-tax mechanism and lump-sum transfers, government intervention is beneficial to the extent it maximizes our utilitarian measure of welfare and reduces both inefficiency associated with misdirected investment in human capital and standard inequality indexes. After considering the possibility of decomposing our utilitarian measure of welfare and of allowing for public debt, we show that reduced inequality is the driving force which accounts for welfare improvement and that public debt plays no role. Robustness analysis shows that endogenizing labor supply does not lead to substantial changes in previous results

Suggested Citation

  • Leandro Gonçalves do Nascimento, 2004. "Investment in Human Capital in a Macrodynamic Framework: Redistributive Taxation, Public Debt and Welfare," Econometric Society 2004 North American Summer Meetings 539, Econometric Society.
    • Handle: RePEc:ecm:nasm04:539
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://repec.org/esNASM04/up.25823.1075585183.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gomes, Joao & Greenwood, Jeremy & Rebelo, Sergio, 2001. "Equilibrium unemployment," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 109-152, August.
    2. S. Rao Aiyagari, 1994. "Uninsured Idiosyncratic Risk and Aggregate Saving," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(3), pages 659-684.
    3. Aiyagari, S. Rao & Greenwood, Jeremy & Seshadri, Ananth, 2002. "Efficient Investment in Children," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 102(2), pages 290-321, February.
    4. Floden, Martin, 2001. "The effectiveness of government debt and transfers as insurance," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 81-108, August.
    5. Lance Lochner & Alexander Monge-Naranjo, 2002. "Human Capital Formation with Endogenous Credit Constraints," NBER Working Papers 8815, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Lucas, Robert Jr., 1982. "Interest rates and currency prices in a two-country world," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(3), pages 335-359.
    7. Greenwood, Jeremy & Hercowitz, Zvi & Huffman, Gregory W, 1988. "Investment, Capacity Utilization, and the Real Business Cycle," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(3), pages 402-417, June.
    8. Leandro Nascimento, 2004. "Investment in Human Capital in a Macrodynamic Framework: Redistributive Taxation, Public Debt and Welfare," Econometric Society 2004 Latin American Meetings 100, Econometric Society.
    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. Leandro Nascimento, 2004. "Investment in Human Capital in a Macrodynamic Framework: Redistributive Taxation, Public Debt and Welfare," Econometric Society 2004 Latin American Meetings 100, Econometric Society.
    2. Heathcote, Jonathan & Storesletten, Kjetil & Violante, Giovanni L., 2008. "Insurance and opportunities: A welfare analysis of labor market risk," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(3), pages 501-525, April.
    3. Makoto Nakajima, 2012. "Business Cycles In The Equilibrium Model Of Labor Market Search And Self‐Insurance," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 53(2), pages 399-432, May.
    4. Jang-Ok Cho & Thomas Cooley & Hyung Seok Kim, 2015. "Business Cycle Uncertainty and Economic Welfare," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 18(2), pages 185-200, April.
    5. Jochen Mankart & Rigas Oikonomou, 2017. "Household Search and the Aggregate Labour Market," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 84(4), pages 1735-1788.
    6. Charles Grant & Christos Koulovatianos & Alexander Michaelides & Mario Padula, 2010. "Evidence on the Insurance Effect of Redistributive Taxation," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 92(4), pages 965-973, November.
    7. Sebastian Dyrda & Marcelo Pedroni, 2015. "Optimal Fiscal Policy in a Model with Uninsurable Idiosyncratic Shocks," Working Papers tecipa-550, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    8. Röhrs, Sigrid & Winter, Christoph, 2017. "Reducing government debt in the presence of inequality," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 1-20.
    9. Findeisen, Sebastian & Sachs, Dominik, 2014. "Efficient Labor and Capital Income Taxation over the Life Cycle," Working Papers 14-17, University of Mannheim, Department of Economics.
    10. Eleni Iliopulos & François Langot & Thepthida Sopraseuth, 2019. "Welfare Cost of Fluctuations When Labor Market Search Interacts with Financial Frictions," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 51(8), pages 2207-2237, December.
    11. Adrien Auclert, 2019. "Monetary Policy and the Redistribution Channel," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(6), pages 2333-2367, June.
    12. Lance J. Lochner & Alexander Monge-Naranjo, 2011. "The Nature of Credit Constraints and Human Capital," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(6), pages 2487-2529, October.
    13. Nakajima, Tomoyuki, 2005. "A business cycle model with variable capacity utilization and demand disturbances," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 49(5), pages 1331-1360, July.
    14. Oh, Hyunseung & Reis, Ricardo, 2012. "Targeted transfers and the fiscal response to the great recession," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(S), pages 50-64.
    15. Lopez-Daneri, Martin, 2016. "NIT picking: The macroeconomic effects of a Negative Income Tax," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 1-16.
    16. Zhen Huo & Jose-Victor Rios-Rull, 2015. "Tightening Financial Frictions on Households, Recessions, and Price Reallocations," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 18(1), pages 118-139, January.
    17. Nicolas Coeurdacier & Hélène Rey, 2013. "Home Bias in Open Economy Financial Macroeconomics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 51(1), pages 63-115, March.
    18. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/c8dmi8nm4pdjkuc9g81p7j6b6 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Kjetil Storesletten & Chris Telmer & Amir Yaron, 2007. "Asset Pricing with Idiosyncratic Risk and Overlapping Generations," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 10(4), pages 519-548, October.
    20. Nils M. Gornemann & Keith Kuester & Makoto Nakajima, 2021. "Doves for the Rich, Hawks for the Poor? Distributional Consequences of Systematic Monetary Policy," Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute Working Papers 50, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    21. Grey Gordon & Pablo Guerron-Quintana, 2018. "Dynamics of Investment, Debt, and Default," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 28, pages 71-95, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D1 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior
    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • D52 - Microeconomics - - General Equilibrium and Disequilibrium - - - Incomplete Markets
    • 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:ecm:nasm04:539. 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: Christopher F. Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/essssea.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.