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Optimal fiscal policy with recursive preferences

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  • Anastasios Karantounias

    (Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta)

Abstract

When the intertemporal elasticity of substitution is disentangled from risk aversion as in the recursive preferences of Epstein and Zin (1989) and Weil (1990), news about the intertemporal profile of consumption and leisure affect the equilibrium value of the government's portfolio of securities and, therefore, the extent to which the government has to resort to distortionary taxation in order to finance government expenditures. This paper studies the implications of this channel for the optimal capital and labor income taxation over the business cycle. In contrast to the case of time-additive expected utility, the excess burden of taxation becomes time-varying and persistent, causing taxation at the intertemporal margin and variation of taxation at the intratemporal margin. Optimal labor taxes become endogenously persistent.

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  • Anastasios Karantounias, 2012. "Optimal fiscal policy with recursive preferences," 2012 Meeting Papers 1085, Society for Economic Dynamics.
  • Handle: RePEc:red:sed012:1085
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Anthony Diercks, 2016. "The Equity Premium, Long-Run Risk, and Optimal Monetary Policy," 2016 Meeting Papers 207, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    2. Benigno, Pierpaolo & Paciello, Luigi, 2014. "Monetary policy, doubts and asset prices," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 85-98.
    3. Steve Raymond & Lukas Schmid & Anastasios Karantounias & Mariano Croce, 2017. "A Tax Plan for Endogenous Innovation," 2017 Meeting Papers 109, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    4. Piero Gottardi & Atsushi Kajii & Tomoyuki Nakajima, 2015. "Optimal Taxation and Debt with Uninsurable Risks to Human Capital Accumulation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(11), pages 3443-3470, November.
    5. Mikhail Golosov & David Evans & anmol bhandari, 2017. "Risk and Monetary Policy in a New Keynesian Model," 2017 Meeting Papers 1359, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    6. Chien, YiLi & Wen, Yi, 2022. "The determination of public debt under both aggregate and idiosyncratic uncertainty," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 203(C).
    7. Stanca Lorenzo, 2023. "Recursive preferences, correlation aversion, and the temporal resolution of uncertainty," Working papers 080, Department of Economics, Social Studies, Applied Mathematics and Statistics (Dipartimento di Scienze Economico-Sociali e Matematico-Statistiche), University of Torino.
    8. Anmol Bhandari & David Evans & Mikhail Golosov & Thomas Sargent, 2019. "The Optimal Maturity of Government Debt," 2019 Meeting Papers 1011, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    9. Mariano Max Croce & Thien T. Nguyen & Steve Raymond, 2019. "Persistent Government Debt and Aggregate Risk Distribution," NBER Working Papers 26177, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Zhengyang Jiang & Hanno Lustig & Mindy Xiaolan & Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, 2019. "Government Risk Premium Puzzle," 2019 Meeting Papers 437, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    11. Hengjie Ai & Ravi Bansal, 2016. "Risk Preferences and The Macro Announcement Premium," NBER Working Papers 22527, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Guanlong Ren & John Stachurski, 2018. "Dynamic Programming with Recursive Preferences: Optimality and Applications," Papers 1812.05748, arXiv.org, revised Jun 2020.
    13. Croce, Mariano & Nguyen, Thien & Raymond, Steve, 2019. "Persistent Government Debt and Aggregate Risk Distribution," CEPR Discussion Papers 13922, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    14. Phitawat Poonpolkul, 2023. "Age-Dependent Risk Aversion: Re-evaluating Fiscal Policy Impacts of Population Aging," PIER Discussion Papers 198, Puey Ungphakorn Institute for Economic Research.
    15. Croce, M. & Nguyen, Thien T. & Raymond, S., 2021. "Persistent government debt and aggregate risk distribution," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 140(2), pages 347-367.
    16. Vasilev, Aleksandar, 2018. "Optimal fiscal policy with Epstein-Zin preferences and utility-enhancing government services: lessons from Bulgaria (1999-2016)," EconStor Preprints 183134, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    17. Poonpolkul, Phitawat, 2023. "Age-dependent risk aversion: Re-evaluating fiscal policy impacts of population aging," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 26(C).

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D80 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - General
    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory
    • H21 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Efficiency; Optimal Taxation
    • H63 - Public Economics - - National Budget, Deficit, and Debt - - - Debt; Debt Management; Sovereign Debt

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