IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedmsr/193.html

The jointly optimal inflation tax, income tax structure, and transfers

Author

Listed:
  • Preston J. Miller

Abstract

The welfare-maximizing income tax structure, rate of money creation, and amounts of intergenerational transfers are jointly determined for given rates of government consumption. When government consumption is zero, it is found for the parameter values examined that the income tax structure is progressive, the rate of money change is negative, and positive transfers are made to the old. As government consumption increases, the tax structure's progressivity declines and turns increasingly regressive, the rate of money change rises, and transfers decrease. It is found that the bulk of the increase in government consumption is optimally financed by a cut in transfers.

Suggested Citation

  • Preston J. Miller, 1995. "The jointly optimal inflation tax, income tax structure, and transfers," Staff Report 193, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedmsr:193
    DOI: 10.21034/sr.193
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.minneapolisfed.org/research/sr/sr193.pdf
    File Function: Full Text
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.21034/sr.193?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. Miller, Preston J., 1984. "Income stability and economic efficiency under alternative tax schemes," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 121-141, January.
    3. Krusell, Per & Quadrini, Vincenzo & Rios-Rull, Jose-Victor, 1996. "Are consumption taxes really better than income taxes?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 475-503, June.
    4. Feldstein, Martin & Liebman, Jeffrey B., 2002. "Social security," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 32, pages 2245-2324, Elsevier.
    5. Miller, Preston J., 1993. "Optimal income tax in a monetary economy," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 443-465, May.
    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. Erosa, Andres & Gervais, Martin, 2002. "Optimal Taxation in Life-Cycle Economies," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 105(2), pages 338-369, August.
    2. Zhang, Jie & Davies, James & Zeng, Jinli & McDonald, Stuart, 2008. "Optimal taxation in a growth model with public consumption and home production," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(3-4), pages 885-896, April.
    3. Steve Ambler, 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.
    4. Mathias Trabandt, 2006. "Optimal Pre-Announced Tax Reforms Under Valuable And Productive Government Spending," 2006 Meeting Papers 668, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    5. Simon Gilchrist & Egon Zakrajsek, 2007. "Investment and the Cost of Capital: New Evidence from the Corporate Bond Market," NBER Working Papers 13174, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. 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.
    7. Laczó, Sarolta & Rossi, Raffaele, 2020. "Time-consistent consumption taxation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 194-220.
    8. Karantounias, Anastasios G., 2023. "Doubts about the model and optimal policy," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 210(C).
    9. C. Lee, 1998. "Life Cycle Savings in the United States, 1900-1990," CPE working papers 0014, University of Chicago - Centre for Population Economics.
    10. Martin Feldstein & Elena Ranguelova & Andrew Samwick, 2001. "The Transition to Investment-Based Social Security When Portfolio Returns and Capital Profitability Are Uncertain," NBER Chapters, in: Risk Aspects of Investment-Based Social Security Reform, pages 41-90, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Kotlikoff, Laurence J, 1988. "Intergenerational Transfers and Savings," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 2(2), pages 41-58, Spring.
    12. Hao Li & Gaowang Wang & Jun Yu, 2025. "Revisiting Optimal Capital Taxation with the Spirit of Capitalism," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 26(2), pages 501-524, November.
    13. Vasia Panousi, 2008. "Capital Taxation with Entrepreneurial Risk," 2008 Meeting Papers 36, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    14. Facundo Piguillem & Anderson Schneider, 2013. "Heterogeneous Labor Skills, The Median Voter and Labor Taxes," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 16(2), pages 332-349, April.
    15. Gustman, Alan L. & Steinmeier, Thomas L., 2001. "How effective is redistribution under the social security benefit formula?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(1), pages 1-28, October.
    16. Ester Faia & Tommaso Monacelli, 2003. "Ramsey monetary policy and international relative prices," Proceedings, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    17. Biljanovska, Nina & Vardoulakis, Alexandros P., 2019. "Capital taxation with heterogeneous discounting and collateralized borrowing," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 97-109.
    18. Shinichi Nishiyama & Kent Smetters, 2008. "The Optimal Design of Social Security Benefits," Working Papers wp197, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.
    19. Juan Equiza Goni, 2014. "Sovereign Debt in the U.S. and Growth Expectations," Working Papers ECARES ECARES 2014-25, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    20. Martin Feldstein, 1997. "Transition to a Fully Funded Pension System: Five Economic Issues," NBER Working Papers 6149, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:fip:fedmsr:193. 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: Kate Hansel (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cfrbmus.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.