Taxation, time preference, and long term international lending

Abstract

This paper considers capital movements between two countries with infinite horizons that differ in their rates of time preference. The paper investigates whether there exist regimes of taxing international lending that follow from national optimizing behavior and are consistent with positive consumption in the impatient country in steady state. Three types of taxation regime are considered: (i) taxation by only the borrower country, (ii) taxation by only the lender country, and (iii) taxation by both countries. For all three cases, positive consumption in steady state by the impatient country is possible if the two countries differ sufficiently little in their rates of time preference.