IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ucr/wpaper/201913.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Progressive Taxation, Nominal Wage Rigidity, and Business Cycle Destabilization

Author

Listed:
  • Jang-Ting Guo

    () (Department of Economics, University of California Riverside)

  • Miroslav Gabrovski

    (University of Hawaii at Manoa)

Abstract

In the context of a prototypical New Keynesian model, this paper examines the theoretical interrelations between two tractable formulations of progressive taxation on labor income versus (i) the equilibrium degree of nominal wage rigidity as well as (ii) the resulting volatilities of hours worked and output in response to a monetary shock. In sharp contrast to the traditional stabilization view, we analytically show that linearly progressive taxation always operates like an automatic destabilizer which leads to higher cyclical fluctuations within the macroeconomy. We also obtain the same business cycle destabilization result under continuously progressive taxation if the initial degree of tax progressivity is sufficient low.

Suggested Citation

  • Jang-Ting Guo & Miroslav Gabrovski, 2019. "Progressive Taxation, Nominal Wage Rigidity, and Business Cycle Destabilization," Working Papers 201913, University of California at Riverside, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucr:wpaper:201913
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://economics.ucr.edu/repec/ucr/wpaper/201913.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2019
    Download Restriction: no

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. King, Robert G. & Plosser, Charles I. & Rebelo, Sergio T., 1988. "Production, growth and business cycles : II. New directions," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(2-3), pages 309-341.
    2. Fabrizio Mattesini & Lorenza Rossi, 2012. "Monetary Policy and Automatic Stabilizers: The Role of Progressive Taxation," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 44(5), pages 825-862, August.
    3. King, Robert G. & Plosser, Charles I. & Rebelo, Sergio T., 1988. "Production, growth and business cycles : I. The basic neoclassical model," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(2-3), pages 195-232.
    4. Dromel, Nicolas L. & Pintus, Patrick A., 2007. "Linearly progressive income taxes and stabilization," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(1), pages 25-29, March.
    5. R. A. Musgrave & Tun Thin, 1948. "Income Tax Progression, 1929-48," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 56, pages 498-498.
    6. Agell, Jonas & Dillen, Mats, 1994. "Macroeconomic externalities : Are Pigouvian taxes the answer?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 111-126, January.
    7. Kleven, Henrik Jacobsen & Kreiner, Claus Thustrup, 2003. "The role of taxes as automatic destabilizers in New Keynesian economics," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(5-6), pages 1123-1136, May.
    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. Miroslav Gabrovski & Jang-Ting Guo, 2020. "Progressive Taxation as an Automatic Stabilizer under Nominal Wage Rigidity and Preference Shocks," Working Papers 202004, University of California at Riverside, Department of Economics.

    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. James B. Davies & Jinli Zeng & Jie Zhang, 2009. "Time‐consistent taxation in a dynastic family model with human and physical capital and a balanced government budget," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 42(3), pages 1023-1049, August.
    2. Pablo Burriel & Jesús Fernández-Villaverde & Juan Rubio-Ramírez, 2010. "MEDEA: a DSGE model for the Spanish economy," SERIEs: Journal of the Spanish Economic Association, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 1(1), pages 175-243, March.
    3. D’Erasmo, P. & Mendoza, E.G. & Zhang, J., 2016. "What is a Sustainable Public Debt?," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 2493-2597, Elsevier.
    4. Dirk Niepelt, 2020. "Monetary Policy with Reserves and CBDC: Optimality, Equivalence, and Politics," Working Papers 20.05, Swiss National Bank, Study Center Gerzensee.
    5. Smulders, Sjak & Gradus, Raymond, 1996. "Pollution abatement and long-term growth," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 505-532, November.
    6. Rabanal, Pau & Rubio-Ramírez, Juan F., 2015. "Can international macroeconomic models explain low-frequency movements of real exchange rates?," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(1), pages 199-211.
    7. Boppart, Timo & Krusell, Per & Mitman, Kurt, 2018. "Exploiting MIT shocks in heterogeneous-agent economies: the impulse response as a numerical derivative," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 68-92.
    8. Alison Butler & Michael R. Pakko, 1998. "R&D spending and cyclical fluctuations: putting the \"technology\" in technology shocks," Working Papers 1998-020, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    9. Vo Le & Kent Matthews & David Meenagh & Patrick Minford & Zhiguo Xiao, 2014. "Banking and the Macroeconomy in China: A Banking Crisis Deferred?," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 25(1), pages 123-161, February.
    10. Bick, Alexander & Fuchs-Schündeln, Nicola & Lagakos, David & Tsujiyama, Hitoshi, 2019. "Why are Average Hours Worked Lower in Richer Countries?," CEPR Discussion Papers 14180, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    11. M.S.Rafiq, 2006. "Business Cycle Moderation - Good Policies or Good Luck: Evidence and Explanations for the Euro Area," Discussion Paper Series 2006_21, Department of Economics, Loughborough University.
    12. Charles Ka Yui Leung & Joe Cho Yiu Ng & Edward Tang, 2020. "Why is the Hong Kong Housing Market Unaffordable? Some Stylized Facts and Estimations," Globalization Institute Working Papers 380, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
    13. Farmer, Roger E. A. & Jang-Ting, Guo, 1995. "The econometrics of indeterminacy: an applied study," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 225-271, December.
    14. Juan Equiza Goni, 2014. "Sovereign Debt in the U.S. and Growth Expectations," Working Papers ECARES ECARES 2014-25, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    15. Lawrence Christiano & Mathias Trabandt & Karl Walentin, 2021. "Involuntary Unemployment and the Business Cycle," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 39, pages 26-54, January.
    16. Zhicheng Zhou & Prapatchon Jariyapan, 2013. "The impact of macroeconomic policies to real estate market in People's Republic of China," The Empirical Econometrics and Quantitative Economics Letters, Faculty of Economics, Chiang Mai University, vol. 2(3), pages 75-92, September.
    17. Tobias Broer & Niels-Jakob Harbo Hansen & Per Krusell & Erik Öberg, 2020. "The New Keynesian Transmission Mechanism: A Heterogeneous-Agent Perspective," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 87(1), pages 77-101.
    18. Fuhrer, Jeffrey C., 1997. "Towards a compact, empirically-verified rational expectations model for monetary policy analysis," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 197-230, December.
    19. Rupert, Peter & Šustek, Roman, 2019. "On the mechanics of New-Keynesian models," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 53-69.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Progressive Taxation; Nominal Wage Rigidity; Automatic Stabilizer; Business Cycles.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E12 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General Aggregative Models - - - Keynes; Keynesian; Post-Keynesian; Modern Monetary Theory
    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy

    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:ucr:wpaper:201913. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Kelvin Mac). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/deucrus.html .

    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 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.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.