IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/20530.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

In Praise of Frank Ramsey's Contribution to the Theory of Taxation

Author

Listed:
  • Joseph E. Stiglitz

Abstract

Frank Ramsey's classic paper "A contribution to the theory of taxation" gave rise to the modern theory of optimal taxation. This paper traces the literature that grew out of Ramsey's 1927 paper and assesses which of its key insights has proven robust. Though the path breaking work of Peter Diamond and James Mirrlees showed that Ramsey's results could be generalized in some important ways, other work showed that the domain of applicability of Ramsey's original insights may be more limited: changes in assumptions about the set of feasible taxes (not allowing certain taxes, or allowing a progressive income tax or non-linear commodity taxes), and in particular about the taxation of pure rents, incorporating more explicitly distributional considerations, and/or recognizing the important ways in which our economy differs from the competitive model underlying Ramsey's analysis all change the optimal structure of commodity taxation in important ways.

Suggested Citation

  • Joseph E. Stiglitz, 2014. "In Praise of Frank Ramsey's Contribution to the Theory of Taxation," NBER Working Papers 20530, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:20530
    Note: PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w20530.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robin Boadway & Motohiro Sato, 2009. "Optimal Tax Design and Enforcement with an Informal Sector," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 1(1), pages 1-27, February.
    2. N. Gregory Mankiw & Matthew Weinzierl & Danny Yagan, 2009. "Optimal Taxation in Theory and Practice," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 23(4), pages 147-174, Fall.
    3. Kaplow, Louis, 2006. "On the undesirability of commodity taxation even when income taxation is not optimal," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(6-7), pages 1235-1250, August.
    4. Cremer, Helmuth & Pestieau, Pierre, 2006. "Wealth transfer taxation: a survey of the theoretical literature," Handbook on the Economics of Giving, Reciprocity and Altruism, in: S. Kolm & Jean Mercier Ythier (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Giving, Altruism and Reciprocity, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 16, pages 1107-1134, Elsevier.
    5. Cremer, Helmuth & Pestieau, Pierre & Rochet, Jean-Charles, 2003. "Capital income taxation when inherited wealth is not observable," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(11), pages 2475-2490, October.
    6. Bovenberg, A Lans & Goulder, Lawrence H, 1996. "Optimal Environmental Taxation in the Presence of Other Taxes: General-Equilibrium Analyses," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(4), pages 985-1000, September.
    7. Baumol, William J, 1982. "Contestable Markets: An Uprising in the Theory of Industry Structure," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 72(1), pages 1-15, March.
    8. William Vickrey, 1977. "The City as a Firm," International Economic Association Series, in: Martin S. Feldstein & Robert P. Inman (ed.), The Economics of Public Services, chapter 13, pages 334-343, Palgrave Macmillan.
    9. David E. M. Sappington & Joseph E. Stiglitz, 1987. "Privatization, information and incentives," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 6(4), pages 567-585.
    10. Arnott, Richard & Greenwald, Bruce & Stiglitz, Joseph E., 1994. "Information and economic efficiency," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 6(1), pages 77-82, March.
    11. Konishi, Hideo, 1995. "A Pareto-improving commodity tax reform under a smooth nonlinear income tax," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(3), pages 413-446, March.
    12. Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez, 2012. "A Theory of Optimal Capital Taxation," NBER Working Papers 17989, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Bovenberg, A.L. & Goulder, L.H., 1996. "Optimal environmental taxation in the presence of other taxes : General equilibrium analyses," Other publications TiSEM 5d4b7517-c5c8-4ef6-ab76-3, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    14. Aiyagari, S Rao, 1995. "Optimal Capital Income Taxation with Incomplete Markets, Borrowing Constraints, and Constant Discounting," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 103(6), pages 1158-1175, December.
    15. Judd, Kenneth L., 1985. "Redistributive taxation in a simple perfect foresight model," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 59-83, October.
    16. Farrell, Joseph, 1986. "How effective is potential competition?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 67-70.
    17. Nordhaus, William D, 1993. "Optimal Greenhouse-Gas Reductions and Tax Policy in the "Dice" Model," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(2), pages 313-317, May.
    18. Emran, M. Shahe & Stiglitz, Joseph E., 2005. "On selective indirect tax reform in developing countries," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(4), pages 599-623, April.
    19. 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.
    20. Diamond, P. A., 1975. "A many-person Ramsey tax rule," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 4(4), pages 335-342, November.
    21. Richard J. Arnott & Joseph E. Stiglitz, 1979. "Aggregate Land Rents, Expenditure on Public Goods, and Optimal City Size," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 93(4), pages 471-500.
    22. Helmuth Cremer & Firouz Gahvari & Norbert Ladoux, 2002. "Externalities and Optimal Taxation," Chapters, in: Lawrence H. Goulder (ed.), Environmental Policy Making in Economies with Prior Tax Distortions, chapter 14, pages 210-232, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    23. Lucas, Robert E, Jr, 1990. "Supply-Side Economics: An Analytical Review," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 42(2), pages 293-316, April.
    24. J. E. Stiglitz, 1969. "The Effects of Income, Wealth, and Capital Gains Taxation on Risk-Taking," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 83(2), pages 263-283.
    25. Juan Carlos Conesa & Sagiri Kitao & Dirk Krueger, 2009. "Taxing Capital? Not a Bad Idea after All!," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(1), pages 25-48, March.
    26. Atkinson, A. B. & Stiglitz, J. E., 1972. "The structure of indirect taxation and economic efficiency," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 1(1), pages 97-119, April.
    27. Baumol, William J & Bradford, David F, 1970. "Optimal Departures from Marginal Cost Pricing," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 60(3), pages 265-283, June.
    28. Unknown, 1986. "Letters," Choices: The Magazine of Food, Farm, and Resource Issues, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 1(4), pages 1-9.
    29. Inge Mayeres & Stef Proost, 1997. "Optimal Tax and Public Investment Rules for Congestion Type of Externalities," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 99(2), pages 261-279, June.
    30. Laroque, Guy R., 2005. "Indirect taxation is superfluous under separability and taste homogeneity: a simple proof," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 87(1), pages 141-144, April.
    31. J. A. Mirrlees, 1971. "An Exploration in the Theory of Optimum Income Taxation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 38(2), pages 175-208.
    32. Emmanuel Saez, 2001. "Using Elasticities to Derive Optimal Income Tax Rates," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 68(1), pages 205-229.
    33. Atkinson, A. B. & Stiglitz, J. E., 1976. "The design of tax structure: Direct versus indirect taxation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 6(1-2), pages 55-75.
    34. Chamley, Christophe, 1986. "Optimal Taxation of Capital Income in General Equilibrium with Infinite Lives," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 54(3), pages 607-622, May.
    35. De Bonis, Valeria & Spataro, Luca, 2005. "Taxing Capital Income As Pigouvian Correction: The Role Of Discounting The Future," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 9(4), pages 469-477, September.
    36. Keen, Michael, 2008. "VAT, tariffs, and withholding: Border taxes and informality in developing countries," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(10-11), pages 1892-1906, October.
    37. Bruce C. Greenwald & Joseph E. Stiglitz, 1986. "Externalities in Economies with Imperfect Information and Incomplete Markets," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 101(2), pages 229-264.
    38. Brock, William A, 1983. "Contestable Markets and the Theory of Industry Structure: A Review Article," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 91(6), pages 1055-1066, December.
    39. repec:bla:scandj:v:99:y:1997:i:2:p:261-79 is not listed on IDEAS
    40. Ramsey, Frank P., 1926. "Truth and Probability," Histoy of Economic Thought Chapters, in: Braithwaite, R. B. (ed.),The Foundations of Mathematics and other Logical Essays, chapter 7, pages 156-198, McMaster University Archive for the History of Economic Thought.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Luca Spataro & Tommaso Crescioli, 2024. "How much capital should be taxed? A review of the quantitative and empirical literature," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(4), pages 1399-1436, September.
    2. Firouz Gahvari & Luca Micheletto, 2019. "Heterogeneity, monetary policy, Mirrleesian taxes, and the Friedman rule," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 67(4), pages 983-1018, June.
    3. Chugh, Sanjay K. & Lechthaler, Wolfgang & Merkl, Christian, 2018. "Optimal fiscal policy with labor selection," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 142-189.
    4. Daubanes, Julien Xavier & Lasserre, Pierre, 2023. "How should the use of nonrenewables be taxed under a public budget constraint?," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    5. Valeria Bonis & Luca Spataro, 2018. "Optimal income taxation and migration," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 25(4), pages 867-882, August.
    6. Junichi Minagawa & Thorsten Upmann, 2018. "Optimal taxation under a consumption target," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 50(4), pages 663-676, April.
    7. Bastani, Spencer & Blomquist, Sören & Micheletto, Luca, 2016. "Optimal commodity taxation with varying quality of goods," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(1), pages 89-100.
    8. Diego Fernández Felices & Isidro Guardarucci & Jorge Puig, 2016. "El Impuesto al Valor Agregado en Argentina. Consideraciones sobre su incidencia distributiva y propuestas de reforma," Revista Actualidad Económica, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Facultad de Ciencias Económicas, Instituto de Economía y Finanzas, vol. 26(90), pages 29-38, Sept-Dic.
    9. Berliant, Marcus & Gouveia, Miguel, 2022. "On the Political Economy of Nonlinear Income Taxation," MPRA Paper 113140, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Gahvari, Firouz & Micheletto, Luca, 2016. "Capital income taxation and the Atkinson–Stiglitz theorem," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 147(C), pages 86-89.
    11. José Mª Durán-Cabré & Julien Daubanes & Pierre-Yves Yanni & Xavier Oberson & Uwe Thuemmel, 2019. "The Taxation of Robots / La tributación de los robots / La tributació dels robots en sistemes de salut descentralitzats," IEB Reports ieb_report_2_2019, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    12. Torben M. Andersen & Marias H. Gestsson, 2022. "Is full annuitization socially optimal?," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 135(2), pages 199-217, March.
    13. Torben M. Andersen, 2020. "Taxation of capital income in overlapping generations economies," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 22(5), pages 1245-1261, September.
    14. Albertsen, Lau H. & Andersen, Mads & Boscán, Luis R. & Santos, Athila Q., 2020. "Implementing dynamic electricity taxation in Denmark," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    15. Kristjánsson, Arnaldur Sölvi, 2016. "Optimal Taxation with Endogenous Return to Capital," Memorandum 06/2016, Oslo University, Department of Economics.
    16. Helmuth Cremer & Firouz Gahvari, 2017. "Restoring Ramsey tax lessons to Mirrleesian tax settings: Atkinson–Stiglitz and Ramsey reconciled," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 49(1), pages 11-35, June.

    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. Stiglitz, Joseph E., 2018. "Pareto efficient taxation and expenditures: Pre- and re-distribution," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 101-119.
    2. Robin Boadway, 2011. "Viewpoint: Innovations in the theory and practice of redistribution policy," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 44(4), pages 1138-1183, November.
    3. Bierbrauer Felix J., 2016. "Effizienz oder Gerechtigkeit?: Ungleiche Einkommen, ungleiche Vermögen und Optimale Steuern," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, De Gruyter, vol. 17(1), pages 2-24, April.
    4. Felix Bierbrauer, 2016. "Effizienz oder Gerechtigkeit? Ungleiche Einkommen, ungleiche Vermögen und die Theorie der optimalen Besteuerung," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2016_03, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    5. Jacquet, Laurence & Lehmann, Etienne, 2021. "How to Tax Different Incomes?," IZA Discussion Papers 14739, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. Wojciech Kopczuk, 2012. "Taxation of Intergenerational Transfers and Wealth," NBER Working Papers 18584, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Spencer Bastani & Daniel Waldenström, 2020. "How Should Capital Be Taxed?," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(4), pages 812-846, September.
    8. George Economides & Apostolis Philippopoulos & Anastasios Rizos, 2020. "Optimal tax policy under tax evasion," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 27(2), pages 339-362, April.
    9. Saez, Emmanuel, 2013. "Optimal progressive capital income taxes in the infinite horizon model," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 61-74.
    10. Boháček, Radim & Kejak, Michal, 2018. "Optimal government policies in models with heterogeneous agents," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 176(C), pages 834-858.
    11. Eddy Zanoutene, 2023. "Scale‐dependent and risky returns to savings: Consequences for optimal capital taxation," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 25(3), pages 532-569, June.
    12. Peter Diamond & Emmanuel Saez, 2011. "The Case for a Progressive Tax: From Basic Research to Policy Recommendations," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 25(4), pages 165-190, Fall.
    13. Antoine Ferey & Benjamin B. Lockwood & Dmitry Taubinsky, 2024. "Sufficient Statistics for Nonlinear Tax Systems with General Across-Income Heterogeneity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 114(10), pages 3206-3249, October.
    14. Peter Diamond, 2009. "Taxes and Pensions," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 76(1), pages 2-15, July.
    15. Bas Jacobs, 2013. "From Optimal Tax Theory to Applied Tax Policy," FinanzArchiv: Public Finance Analysis, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 69(3), pages 338-389, September.
    16. C. Benassi & E. Randon, 2015. "Optimal Commodity Taxation and Income Distribution," Working Papers wp1001, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    17. Masaaki Suzuki, 2014. "Debates on Individual Income Tax and Potential Japanese Tax Reforms," Public Policy Review, Policy Research Institute, Ministry of Finance Japan, vol. 10(3), pages 371-396, October.
    18. Hsu, Minchung & Yang, C.C., 2013. "Optimal linear and two-bracket income taxes with idiosyncratic earnings risk," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 58-71.
    19. Odd E. Nygård & John T. Revesz, 2015. "Optimal indirect taxation and the uniformity debate: A review of theoretical results and empirical contributions," Discussion Papers 809, Statistics Norway, Research Department.
    20. Kitao, Sagiri, 2010. "Labor-dependent capital income taxation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(8), pages 959-974, November.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory
    • H2 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue
    • H21 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Efficiency; Optimal Taxation

    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:nbr:nberwo:20530. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.