IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/pseptp/halshs-00667438.html

The taxation of capital returns in overlapping generations models

Author

Listed:
  • Julio Dávila

    (CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, CORE - Center of Operation Research and Econometrics [Louvain] - UCL - Université Catholique de Louvain = Catholic University of Louvain, PSE - Paris School of Economics - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement)

Abstract

This paper shows that in the Diamond (1965) overlapping generations economy with production and capital savings, there is a period by-period balanced scal policy supporting a steady state allocation that Pareto improves upon the laissez-faire competitive equilibrium steady state (whether dynamically inefficient or efficient) without resorting to intergenerational transfers. The policy consists of taxing linearly (or subsidizing, in the dynamically efficient case) the returns to capital, while balancing the budget period by period through a lump-sum transfer (or tax, respectively) in second period. This intervention grants every generation the highest steady state utility attainable through markets (i.e. remunerating factors by their marginal productivities and without transfers) which under laissez-faire is not a competitive equilibrium outcome. A transition from the competitive equilibrium steady state to this other steady state is also Pareto-improving when the former is dynamically ineffi cient. The result disentangles from redistributive considerations the impact of the taxation of capital returns on steady state welfare, and thus provides a rationale for the taxation of capital returns that is based on efficiency considerations and not on redistributive goals.

Suggested Citation

  • Julio Dávila, 2012. "The taxation of capital returns in overlapping generations models," PSE-Ecole d'économie de Paris (Postprint) halshs-00667438, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:pseptp:halshs-00667438
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jmacro.2011.12.010
    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
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    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. Hiraguchi, Ryoji & Shibata, Akihisa, 2015. "Taxing capital is a good idea: The role of idiosyncratic risk in an OLG model," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 258-269.
    2. James B. Bullard & Carlos Garriga & Christopher J. Waller, 2012. "Demographics, redistribution, and optimal inflation," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, issue Nov, pages 419-440.
    3. Gupta, Rangan & Stander, Lardo, 2018. "Endogenous fluctuations in an endogenous growth model: An analysis of inflation targeting as a policy," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 1-8.
    4. repec:fip:fedlps:y:2012:i:may30 is not listed on IDEAS

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • 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:hal:pseptp:halshs-00667438. 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: Caroline Bauer (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    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.