THE TAXATION OF SUPERSTARS

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Scheuer, Florian; Werning, Ivan
• 署名单位: Stanford University; University of Zurich; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
• 刊物名称: QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0033-5533
• DOI: 10.1093/QJE/qjw036
• 发表日期: 2017
• 页码: 211-270
• 关键词: marginal tax rates; taxable income; public production; LABOR; elasticities; ORGANIZATION; INEQUALITY; KNOWLEDGE; hierarchies; responses

摘要

How are optimal taxes affected by superstar phenomena? To answer this question, we extend the Mirrlees model to incorporate an assignment problem in the labor market that generates superstar effects. Perhaps surprisingly, rather than providing a rationale for higher taxes, we show that superstar effects provide a force for lower marginal taxes conditional on the observed distribution of earnings. Superstar effects make the earnings schedule convex, which increases the responsiveness of individual earnings to tax changes. We show that various common elasticity measures must be adjusted upward in optimal tax formulas. Finally, we study a comparative static that does not keep the observed earnings distribution fixed: when superstar technologies are introduced, inequality increases but we obtain a neutrality result, finding optimal taxes unaltered.