Ramsey Taxation in the Solow-Uzawa Growth Model with Public Goods

Abstract

This paper examines issues related to optimal taxation similar to those addressed by Ramsey in his celebrated 1927 paper. Rather than determining taxes on commodities with given revenue to minimize the decrement of utility may be minimum in the Ramsey approach, this model determines optimal taxation to maximize utility with revenue as endogenous variable. We analyze optimal taxation in neoclassical growth theory. We introduce a public sector to the Solow-Uzawa neoclassical growth model. The economy is composed of the public, capital goods and consumer goods sectors. Public goods enter into the utility function. The public sector is financially supported by the government’s revenue from taxing consumption of capital goods and consumer goods. We derive the optimal taxation rule and construct the dynamics of the national economy. The model describes nonlinear dynamic interactions among national and sectoral growth, economic structural change, wealth/capital accumulation, and optimal tax rates in perfect competitive markets with the government intervention. We carry out comparative analysis to analyze effects of changes in some parameters on the tax rates and other economic variables.