IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ecm/nasm04/539.html

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. Floden, Martin, 2001. "The effectiveness of government debt and transfers as insurance," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 81-108, August.
    4. Ferreira, Pedro Cavalcanti & Cunha, Bárbara Vasconcelos Boavista da, 2003. "Custo de ciclo econômico no Brasil em um modelo com restrição a crédito," FGV EPGE Economics Working Papers (Ensaios Economicos da EPGE) 471, EPGE Brazilian School of Economics and Finance - FGV EPGE (Brazil).
    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. Aiyagari, S. Rao & Greenwood, Jeremy & Seshadri, Ananth, 2002. "Efficient Investment in Children," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 102(2), pages 290-321, February.
    7. 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.
    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.
    9. 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.
    10. Val, Paulo Rogério da Costa & Ferreira, Pedro Cavalcanti, 2002. "Modelos de ciclos reais de negócios aplicados à economis brasileira," FGV EPGE Economics Working Papers (Ensaios Economicos da EPGE) 438, EPGE Brazilian School of Economics and Finance - FGV EPGE (Brazil).
    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. 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.
    4. 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.
    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. Audrey Desbonnet & Thomas Weitzenblum, 2012. "Why Do Governments End Up With Debt? Short-Run Effects Matter," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 50(4), pages 905-919, October.
    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. Carlos Urrutia & Marina Mendes Tavares, 2013. "Accounting for the Trends in Inequality and Intergenerational Mobility in the U.S," 2013 Meeting Papers 1256, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    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. Jonathan Heathcote, 2003. "On the Distributional Effects of Reducing Capital Taxes (previously: Factor Taxation with Heterogeneous Agents)," Working Papers gueconwpa~03-03-22, Georgetown University, Department of Economics.
    11. Bianconi, Marcelo, 2008. "Heterogeneity, adverse selection and valuation with endogenous labor supply," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 113-126.
    12. Nawid Siassi, 2019. "Inequality and the Marriage Gap," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 31, pages 160-181, January.
    13. 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.
    14. 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.
    15. Maarten Janssen & Sandro Shelegia, 2012. "Consumer Search and Vertical Relations: The Triple Marginalization Problem," Vienna Economics Papers 1206, University of Vienna, Department of Economics.
    16. Yongsung Chang & Sun-Bin Kim & Mark Bils, 2007. "Comparative Advantage in Cyclical Unemployment," 2007 Meeting Papers 508, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    17. Ester Faia, 2011. "Macroeconomic and welfare implications of financial globalization," Journal of Applied Economics, Universidad del CEMA, vol. 14, pages 119-144, May.
    18. 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.
    19. Clemens, Christiane & Heinemann, Maik, 2015. "Endogenous growth and wealth inequality under incomplete markets and idiosyncratic risk," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 300-317.
    20. Mr. Mauro F Roca, 2009. "Search in the Labor Market under Imperfectly Insurable Income Risk," IMF Working Papers 2009/188, International Monetary Fund.

    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.