Pareto-improving Reform Research Articles

Public redistributive policies in general equilibrium: An application to Greece

We develop a general equilibrium OLG model of a small open economy to quantify the aggregate and distributional implications of a wide menu of public redistributive policies in a unified context. Inequality is driven by unequal parental conditions in financial and human capital. The model is calibrated and solved using fiscal data from Greece. Our aim is to search for public policies, targeted and non-targeted, that can reduce income inequality without damaging the macroeconomy and without worsening the public finances. Pareto-improving reforms that also reduce inequality include an increase in public education spending provided to all and an increase in the inheritance tax rate on financial wealth. At the other end, we identify reforms that may reduce inequality but make everybody worse off. Regarding cases in between, a switch to a fully funded public pension system is good for everybody although it is the rich-born that benefit more by moving to a more efficient macroeconomy.

Pareto-improving reforms of tax deductions

We analyze Pareto-efficient tax deduction rules for work-related expenses. Pareto efficiency dictates a strict rule for marginal deductions along the income distribution. An immediate implication is a recipe for designing Pareto-improving reforms. We apply our theory and simulate a Pareto-improving reform that introduces deductions for non-care household services (housekeeping, gardening, laundry) in the United States. The reform combines marginal deduction rates for household services between 55% and 85% with a slight increase in marginal tax rates.

Optimal Income Taxation: Mirrlees Meets Ramsey

We explore the optimal shape of the income tax and transfer schedule in an environment with distinct roles for public and private insurance. In a calibration to the United States, we find that the optimal system features marginal tax rates that increase in income. When we increase pressure on the government to raise revenue, the optimal marginal tax schedule becomes first flatter and then U-shaped, reconciling various findings in the literature. A power function parametric tax schedule outperforms an affine one, indicating that tax progressivity is more important than lump-sum transfers. We also explore various social welfare objectives and Pareto-improving reforms.

Pareto-improving structural reforms

Economists recommend to partly redistribute gains to losers from a structural reform, which in many cases may be required for making the reform politically viable. However, taxation is distortionary. Then, it is unclear that compensatory transfers can support a Pareto-improving reform. This paper provides sufficient conditions for this to occur, despite tax distortions. In a setting where preferences are isoelastic, deregulation is implementable in a Pareto-improving way through compensatory lump-sum transfers, despite that these are financed by distortionary taxes. In a more general setting, there always exist Pareto-improving reforms but they may involve tightening regulation for some goods. I show that if demand cross-price elasticities are not be too large and that the reform is not too unbalanced, deregulation is again implementable in a Pareto-improving way. Finally, I consider counter-examples where some people earn rents associated with informational or institutional frictions, or where non homothetic preferences may make the schemes considered here not viable.

Pareto-Improving Reforms of Tax Deductions

We analyze Pareto-ei¬?cient tax deduction rules for work-related expenses. Pareto efi¬ ciency dictates a strict rule for marginal deductions along the income distribution. An immediate implication is a recipe for designing Pareto-improving reforms. We apply our theory and simulate a Pareto-improving reform that introduces deductions for non-care household services (housekeeping, gardening, laundry) in the United States. The reform combines marginal deduction rates for household services between 55% and 85% with a slight increase in marginal tax rates.

Optimal asymmetric sector-specific labour taxation in an overlapping generations model

This paper presents a simple rule for optimal asymmetric labour taxation and subsidization in a two-sector model with logarithmic utilities and Cobb–Douglas production functions, linked to demographic factors: fertility rate and longevity. The paper shows that depending on whether the economy is dynamically efficient or inefficient, it may be optimal to tax or subsidize labour in the sectors. Under dynamic inefficiency, it is optimal to tax the investment-goods sector and a Pareto-improving tax reform is possible. Larger output elasticities of capital in the sectors reduce the possibilities of a Pareto-improving reform, while population ageing in terms of higher longevity enhances the possibilities of welfare improvement for all generations. Fertility rates do not affect optimal taxation. In appendix, we also address the cases of capital taxation/subsidisation and value-added taxes.

Pareto-Improving Structural Reforms

Economists recommend to partly redistribute gains to losers from a structural reform, which in many cases may be required for making the reform politically viable. However, taxation is distortionary. Then, it is unclear that compensatory transfers can support a Pareto-improving reform. This paper provides sufficient conditions for this to occur, despite tax distortions. I consider an economy where workers have sector-specific skills and some sectors are regulated by a price floor. Transfers have to be financed by proportional taxation on firms revenues or, equivalently, labor income. Labor supply is elastic to net post-tax real wages, and hence reduced by taxation. In a setting where preferences are isoelastic, deregulation is implementable in a Pareto- improving way through compensatory lump-sum transfers, despite that these are financed by distortionary taxes. In a more general setting, there always exist Pareto-improving reforms but they may involved tightening regulation for some goods. I provide sufficient conditions for deregulation, i.e. a general reduction in price floors, to be Pareto-improving. They imply that demand cross-price elasticities should not be too large and that the reform should not be too unbalanced. Finally, I consider counter-examples where some people earn rents associated with informational or institutional frictions. In such situations, Pareto improvements are unlikely. If losers have veto power, the reform may only be supported by a minority of people. Broadening reform scope is especially useful to raise its political support when its impact is uneven across consumers.

Countering the Power of Vested Interests: Advancing Rationality in Public Decision-Making

:Seemingly Pareto-improving reforms face more opposition than they should. In earlier work, I presented an explanation: voters correctly saw reforms as part of a long-term dynamic game, and they correctly saw how the reform affected outcomes (e.g., by affecting beliefs or coalition formation). Recent advances in behavioral economics derived from insights from sociology emphasize preference endogeneity, noting that beliefs are affected by those of others with whom one identifies and need not be consistent with rationality, as conventionally defined. Thus, individuals may have beliefs about the economic system that differ from those of economists. People may support policies which economists’ analyses suggest are contrary to their interests because they believe these policies advance their interests. Based on previous analyses of the causes of these seeming perversities, I show how economists can modify policy proposals in ways that enhance likelihood of support, e.g., with contingent provisions which are operative in the states of the world that economists know (believe) are unlikely to occur, but which enhance the wellbeing of individuals with such beliefs in those states. Those selling products that are adverse to one’s health have learned how to persuade customers to buy them. Likewise, politicians who are selling policies that are adverse to society’s wellbeing have learned how to market their ideas. Economists will similarly have to learn how to persuade citizens of the desirability of the evidence- and theory-based policies that they advocate.

State capacity, redistributive compensation and the political economy of economic policy reform

If governments can compensate “losers” from large-scale economic reform, such as trade liberalization, by redistributing some of the “winners'” gains, then any potentially Pareto-improving reform should be implemented. However, in many economies, the state's capacity to identify and tax winners is limited. How do such limitations impact the adoption of reforms? We show that for reforms where the distribution of winners and losers is exogenously given, higher state capacity unambiguously helps the adoption of Pareto-improving reforms. However, for reforms which require individual investment decisions by potential winners, better state capacity may not always translate into higher political support for reform.

Optimal Asymmetric Taxation in a Two-Sector Model with Population Ageing

This paper presents a simple condition for optimal asymmetric labour (capital) taxation/subsidization in a two-sector model with logarithmic utilities and Cobb-Douglas production functions, linked to demographic factors: fertility rate and longevity. The paper shows that depending on parameter values, it may be optimal to tax or subsidize labour in the sectors. If it is optimal to tax the investment-goods sector, a Pareto-improving tax reform is possible. Larger output elasticities of capital in the sectors reduce the possibilities of a Pareto-improving reform, while population ageing in terms of higher longevity enhances the possibilities of welfare improvement for all generations. Fertility rates do not affect optimal taxation.

Disagreement and Learning About Reforms

When it comes to economic reforms in developing countries, many economists agree on broad objectives (such as fostering outward orientation). Broad objectives, however, can be pursued in many different ways, and policy experimentation is often indispensable for learning which alternative works locally. We propose a simple model to study this societal learning process. The model explores the role of disagreeing beliefs about “what works”. It suggests that this type of disagreement can stall the societal learning process and cause economic stagnation. Interestingly, this can happen even if everybody knows that Pareto-improving reforms do exist. Our analysis is motivated by the empirical observation of a negative relationship between disagreement and economic growth among poorer countries.

Flexible Pension Take-Up in Social Security

This paper studies the redistribution and welfare effects of increasing the flexibility of individual pension take-up. We use an overlapping-generations model with Beveridgean pay-as-you-go pensions, where individuals differ in ability and life span. We find that introducing flexible pension take-up can induce a Pareto improvement when the initial pension scheme contains within-cohort redistribution and induces early retirement. Such a Pareto-improving reform entails the application of uniform actuarial adjustment of pension entitlements based on average life expectancy. Introducing actuarial non-neutrality that stimulates later retirement further improves such a flexibility reform.

WHY ARE CAPITAL INCOME TAXES SO HIGH?

The Ramsey optimal taxation theory implies that the tax rate on capital income should be zero in the long run. This result holds even if the social planner only cares about workers that do not hold assets, or if the planner only cares about any other group in the economy. This paper demonstrates that although all households agree that capital income taxation should be eliminated in the long run, they do not agree on how to eliminate these taxes. Wealthy households would prefer a reform that is funded by higher taxes on labor income, whereas households with little wealth would prefer a reform that is funded mostly by high taxes on initial wealth. Pareto-improving reforms typically exist, but the welfare gains of such reforms are modest.

Active citizen's income, unconditional income and participation under imperfect competition: a welfare analysis

Various types of basic income schemes are considered to compensate the allocative inefficiencies induced by unemployment benefits. A dynamic general equilibrium model of a unionised economy is developed in which participation to the formal labour market is endogenous and the budget of the State has to balance. It is shown that basic income schemes reduce the equilibrium unemployment rate. Assuming that job-search is costly to monitor, the normative analysis suggests that only the active population should be eligible to the basic income. Introducing such an 'active citizen's income' can be a Pareto-improving reform.

Pareto-Improving Social Security Reform when Financial Markets Are Incomplete!?

This paper studies an overlapping generations model with stochastic production and incomplete markets to assess whether the introduction of an unfunded social security system leads to a Pareto improvement. When returns to capital and wages are imperfectly correlated, a system that endows retired households with claims to labor income enhances the sharing of aggregate risk between generations. Our quantitative analysis shows that, abstracting from the capital crowding-out effect, the introduction of social security represents a Pareto-improving reform, even when the economy is dynamically efficient. However, the severity of the crowding-out effect in general equilibrium tends to overturn these gains.

Evaluating trade reform with many consumers

In this paper we look at the welfare effects of trade reform in the many-consumers case. We show that Pareto-improving reforms with lump-sum taxation or with non-lump-sum taxation are possible in the small country case if sufficient conditions for welfare to rise in

Discretionary policy implementation and reform

Regulatory agencies, treaty negotiators and other delegates often possess considerable authority over the details of policy change. I examine how such discretion can block a Pareto-improving reform when policy change requires the support of both the liberal and conservative factions. Gridlock, reform and reform paradoxes all emerge as cases in a general model with perfect information. A reformer with unknown policy preferences can facilitate escape from a gridlock equilibrium.

Minimum wage legislation as a second best policy

Economists recommend to partly redistribute gains to losers from a structural reform, which in many cases may be required for making the reform politically viable. However, taxation is distortionary. Then, it is unclear that compensatory transfers can support a Pareto-improving reform. This paper provides sufficient conditions for this to occur, despite tax distortions. In a setting where preferences are isoelastic, deregulation is implementable in a Pareto-improving way through compensatory lump-sum transfers, despite that these are financed by distortionary taxes. In a more general setting, there always exist Pareto-improving reforms but they may involve tightening regulation for some goods. I show that if demand cross-price elasticities are not be too large and that the reform is not too unbalanced, deregulation is again implementable in a Pareto-improving way. Finally, I consider counter-examples where some people earn rents associated with informational or institutional frictions, or where non homothetic preferences may make the schemes considered here not viable.