Optimal Mirrleesean Taxation in a Ben-Porath Economy

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Kapicka, Marek
• 署名单位: University of California System; University of California Santa Barbara; Charles University Prague; Czech Academy of Sciences; Economics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences; Czech Academy of Sciences; Economics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-MACROECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7707
• DOI: 10.1257/mac.20110110
• 发表日期: 2015
• 页码: 219-248
• 关键词: Optimal income taxation

摘要

I characterize optimal taxes in a life-cycle economy where ability and human capital are unobservable. I show that unobservable human capital effectively makes preferences over labor nonseparable across age. I generalize the static optimal tax formulas to account for such nonseparabilities and show how they depend both on own-Frisch labor elasticities and cross-Frisch labor elasticities. I calibrate the economy to US data. I find that the optimal marginal income taxes decrease with age, in contrast to both the US tax code and to a model with observable human capital. I demonstrate that the behavior of cross-Frisch elasticities is essential in explaining the decline.