Endogenous discounting, wariness, and efficient capital taxation

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Araujo, Aloisio; Gama, Juan Pablo; Novinski, Rodrigo; Pascoa, Mario R.
• 署名单位: Instituto Nacional de Matematica Pura e Aplicada (IMPA); Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais; Faculdade de Economia e Financas do Ibmec; University of Surrey
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0531
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2019.07.004
• 发表日期: 2019
• 页码: 520-545
• 关键词: General equilibrium; Monetary equilibrium; efficient taxation; Endogenous discounting; Transversality condition; Pure charges

摘要

When the discount factors that infinite lived consumers use at each date are not predetermined but are instead chosen within some set, depending on what the consumption plan is, impatience might not hold. More precisely, if the utility is the infimum of discounted utilities over that set of discount factor sequences, then preferences may be just upper semi-impatient. Such lack of lower semi-impatience, which we refer to as wariness, consists in neglecting distant gains but not distant losses. Examples are the precautionary case (a concern with the worst lifetime outcome) and the habit persistence case (a concern with a fall in living standards). The implementation of efficient allocations by trading assets sequentially requires taxes that avoid excessive savings by raising the opportunity of cost of saving up to the point of matching the marginal benefit of dishoarding at distant dates. Taxes on equilibrium plans are zero in many contexts. (C) 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.