IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ucr/wpaper/202503.html

Progressive Taxation and Long-Run Income Inequality under Endogenous Growth

Author

Listed:
  • Juin-Jen Chang

    (Academia Sinica,)

  • Jang-Ting Guo

    (Department of Economics, University of California Riverside)

  • Wei-Neng Wang

    (National Taichung University of Science and Technology)

Abstract

This paper examines the theoretical and quantitative interrelations between progressive taxation and after-tax income inequality within a one-sector endogenous growth model. In a simplified two-type version of the macroeconomy, we analytically show that higher fiscal progression leads to less unequal long-run gross/net income distributions, provided the general-equilibrium elasticity of aggregate labor supply surpasses a specific negative threshold. In addition, numerical simulations find that our calibrated economy under useless or useful government spending, together with (i) agents' intertemporal elasticity of consumption substitution taking on the highest empirically-plausible value and (ii) a lower-than-unitary elasticity of capital-labor substitution in production, is able to generate qualitatively as well as quantitatively realistic long-run disposable-income inequality effects of changing the tax progressivity vis-Ã -vis recent panel estimation results.

Suggested Citation

  • Juin-Jen Chang & Jang-Ting Guo & Wei-Neng Wang, 2025. "Progressive Taxation and Long-Run Income Inequality under Endogenous Growth," Working Papers 202503, University of California at Riverside, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucr:wpaper:202503
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://economics.ucr.edu/repec/ucr/wpaper/202503.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2025
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. García-Peñalosa, Cecilia & Turnovsky, Stephen J., 2009. "The Dynamics Of Wealth Inequality In A Simple Ramsey Model: A Note On The Role Of Production Flexibility," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 13(2), pages 250-262, April.
    2. Denvil Duncan & Klara Sabirianova Peter, 2016. "Unequal inequalities: Do progressive taxes reduce income inequality?," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 23(4), pages 762-783, August.
    3. Lerman, Robert I. & Yitzhaki, Shlomo, 1989. "Improving the accuracy of estimates of Gini coefficients," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 43-47, September.
    4. Cecilia García‐Peñalosa & Stephen J. Turnovsky, 2011. "Taxation and Income Distribution Dynamics in a Neoclassical Growth Model," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 43(8), pages 1543-1577, December.
    5. Murat Koyuncu & Stephen J. Turnovsky, 2016. "The Dynamics of Growth and Income Inequality under Progressive Taxation," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 18(4), pages 560-588, August.
    6. Jonathan Gruber, 2006. "A Tax-Based Estimate of the Elasticity of Intertemporal Substitution," NBER Working Papers 11945, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    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. Juin-Jen Chang & Jang-Ting Guo & Wei-Neng Wang, 2021. "On Government Spending and Income Inequality under Monopolistic Competition," Working Papers 202103, University of California at Riverside, Department of Economics.
    2. Carneiro, Fernando Moraes & Turnovsky, Stephen J. & Tourinho, Octavio Augusto Fontes, 2022. "Economic growth and inequality tradeoffs under progressive taxation," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    3. Leonhard Frerick & Georg Müller-Fürstenberger & Martin Schmidt & Max Späth, 2022. "Complementarity Modeling of a Ramsey-Type Equilibrium Problem with Heterogeneous Agents," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 60(3), pages 1135-1154, October.
    4. Chen, Shu-Hua, 2020. "Inequality-growth nexus under progressive income taxation," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    5. Chun‐Chieh Huang & Juin‐Jen Chang & Hsiao‐Wen Hung, 2020. "Progressive Tax and Inequality in a Unionized Economy," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 122(1), pages 38-80, January.
    6. Goda, Gopi Shah & Manchester, Colleen Flaherty & Sojourner, Aaron J., 2014. "What will my account really be worth? Experimental evidence on how retirement income projections affect saving," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 80-92.
    7. Juan Luis Londoño & Miguel Székely, 2000. "Persistent Poverty and Excess Inequality: Latin America, 1970-1995," Journal of Applied Economics, Universidad del CEMA, vol. 3, pages 93-134, May.
    8. Stephen Satchell & Susan Thorp, 2007. "Scenario Analysis with Recursive Utility: Dynamic Consumption Plans for Charitable Endowments," Research Paper Series 209, Quantitative Finance Research Centre, University of Technology, Sydney.
    9. Londoño, Juan Luis & Székely, Miguel, 1997. "Persistent Poverty and Excess Inequality: Latin America, 1970-1995," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 6092, Inter-American Development Bank.
    10. Nishimura, Kazuo & Nourry, Carine & Seegmuller, Thomas & Venditti, Alain, 2016. "Public Spending As A Source Of Endogenous Business Cycles In A Ramsey Model With Many Agents," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 20(2), pages 504-524, March.
    11. Berger, Johannes & Strohner, Ludwig, 2020. "Documentation of the PUblic Policy Model for Austria and other European countries (PUMA)," Research Papers 11, EcoAustria – Institute for Economic Research.
    12. Salvatore Barbaro & Anna-Sophie Kurella, 2025. "Dichotomous Preferences: Concepts, Measurement, and Evidence," Working Papers 2506, Gutenberg School of Management and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.
    13. Sanchita Mukherjee & Rina Bhattacharya, 2015. "Do the Keynesian monetary transmission mechanisms work in the MENA region?," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 48(3), pages 969-982, May.
    14. Tatjana Miljkovic & Ying-Ju Chen, 2021. "A new computational approach for estimation of the Gini index based on grouped data," Computational Statistics, Springer, vol. 36(3), pages 2289-2311, September.
    15. ERREYGERS, Guido & CLARKE, Philip & VAN OURTI, Tom, 2010. "Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who in this land is fairest of all? Revisiting the extended concentration index," Working Papers 2010015, University of Antwerp, Faculty of Business and Economics.
    16. Heil, Mark T. & Wodon, Quentin T., 1999. "Future inequality in Carbon Dioxide emissions and the projected impact of abatement proposals," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2084, The World Bank.
    17. Stanley L. Winer, 2016. "The Political Economy of Taxation: Power, Structure, Redistribution," Carleton Economic Papers 16-15, Carleton University, Department of Economics.
    18. Tomas Havranek, 2013. "Publication Bias in Measuring Intertemporal Substitution," Working Papers IES 2013/15, Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Economic Studies, revised Oct 2013.
    19. d’Albis, Hippolyte & Augeraud-Veron, Emmanuelle & Venditti, Alain, 2012. "Business cycle fluctuations and learning-by-doing externalities in a one-sector model," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(5), pages 295-308.
    20. Constantine Alexandrakis, 2014. "Technological change and the U.S. real interest rate," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 38(4), pages 672-686, October.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • E13 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General Aggregative Models - - - Neoclassical
    • H30 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - General

    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:202503. 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: Kelvin Mac (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deucrus.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.