Welfare Effects Of Tax Reform Research Articles

Optimal nonlinear taxation: a simpler approach

The typical method of solving for the optimal nonlinear tax schedule relies on deriving optimal incentive-compatible allocations. While this “primal approach” is mathematically rigorous, it lacks intuitive appeal. This paper considers a different method that relies on directly solving for the optimal tax system. This “dual approach” is much closer to actual tax policy as it centers around the welfare effects of tax reforms. I show that it can easily incorporate preference heterogeneity, as well as individual utility misoptimization. Beyond solving for the optimal tax system, the dual approach allows one to obtain insights into the welfare effects of small nonlinear tax reforms outside the optimum.

Macroeconomic and welfare effects of tax reforms in emerging economies: A case study of Morocco

This paper assesses the macroeconomic and welfare effects of fundamental tax reforms in an emerging/developing economy. We develop a dynamic general equilibrium model with structural and institutional characteristics of non-oil emerging and developing economies and apply the model to Morocco. The model’s simulations suggest that tax reforms imply complex trade-off between growth, government revenue, and equity. A comprehensive approach associated with better targeted social programs, broadens the tax base, removes tax distorsions, better distributes the tax burden, and mitigates adverse distributional effects (that is improves welfare) by making the tax system more progressive and reducing inequalities. For Morocco, a comprehensive tax reform package would involve (i) reducing tax exemptions, (ii) a broader-based property tax, (iii) a lower corporate tax rate, (iv) aligning the VAT rate on exempted goods and services to the standard rates, and (v) a better targeted social safety net. The paper indicates that such a reform package is growth-friendly, broad-based, progressive and has implications for existing gender biases.

Modeling Inequality and Mobility with Stochastic Processes

This paper presents tractable two parameter stochastic processes of the drift-diffusion class in order to model economic processes with a focus on income. Starting from the resulting closed-form, cross-sectional distributions, easy-to-interpret expressions for mobility and inequality (including the popular Gini-coefficient) are derived. The general processes are applied to discuss income mobility and inequality and fitted to US evidence. Heteroscedasticity is crucial to explaining skewed distributions of log-income, while multiplicative risk is necessary for generating Pareto tails. Furthermore, introducing Poisson death jumps also generates Pareto tails in the low end of the distribution and therefore fits the evidence best. Finally, we develop a micro-founded model for income inequality that fits the current US evidence and permits discussing the welfare effects of tax reforms given that individuals also adjust their labor supply and human capital accumulation. According to the model current US taxation is close to its welfare optimum.

DECLINING FEMALE LABOR SUPPLY ELASTICITIES IN THE UNITED STATES AND IMPLICATIONS FOR TAX POLICY: EVIDENCE FROM PANEL DATA

Recent work has provided compelling evidence of a long-term decline in U.S. female labor supply elasticities with respect to wages and income. While previous work used cross-sectional data from the Current Population Survey (CPS), we reexamine the trend for married women using panel data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) from 1980 to 2006. We find evidence in support of a long-term decline in married females' labor supply elasticities on the participation margin but less evidence in support of such a decline on the hours margin. We also investigate the implications of these results for the welfare effects of tax reforms. Policy simulations indicate that shrinking elasticities, mostly concentrated on the participation margin, have contributed to a dramatic decline in the welfare gains from actual and potential tax reforms since the 1980s.

Declining Female Labor Supply Elasticities in the U.S. And Implications for Tax Policy: Evidence from Panel Data

Recent work has provided compelling evidence of a long-term decline in US female labor supply elasticities with respect to wages and to income. While previous work used cross-sectional data from the Current Population Survey (CPS), we reexamine the trend for married women using panel data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) from 1980 to 2006. We find evidence in support of a long-term decline in married females’ labor supply elasticities on the participation margin, but less so on the hours margin. We also extend the analysis to investigating the implications of these results on welfare effects of tax reforms. Policy simulations indicate that shrinking elasticities, mostly concentrated on the participation margin, have contributed to a dramatic decline in welfare gains from actual and potential tax reforms since the 1980’s.

Tax reforms under market distortions in product and labour markets

Using a two-agent model comprised of capitalists and workers, this paper examines the importance of imperfect competition in product and labour markets in determining the welfare effects of tax reform. The reform considered consists of eliminating the capital tax alongside a concurrent rise in the labour tax. In contrast to the perfectly competitive model, models with product or labour market failures each result in welfare losses for the workers in the long-run. In a realistic calibration to the UK economy, combining these imperfections implies that this tax reform will be Pareto improving in the long-run. However, these welfare gains over longer time horizons come at the cost of short-run losses, which, consistent with previous research, result in welfare losses for workers post-reform.

The Distributional Consequences of Tax Reforms Under Market Distortions

In this paper we examine the importance of imperfect competition in product and labour markets in determining the long-run welfare effects of tax reforms assuming agent heterogeneity in capital holdings. Each of these market failures, independently, results in welfare losses for at least a segment of the population, after a capital tax cut and a concurrent labour tax increase. However, when combined in a realistic calibration to the UK economy, they imply that a capital tax cut will be Pareto improving in the long run. Consistent with the theory of second-best, the two distortions in this context work to correct the negative distributional effects of a capital tax cut that each one, on its own, creates.

Welfare Effects of the Tax Reforms in Two Vertically-Related Oligopolies with Environmental Externality

In this paper, I examine the welfare effects of various revenue-neutral tax reforms in the case of two vertically-related oligopolies (downstream and upstream), where the upstream industry is polluting. I show analytically when and how government can improve welfare by initiating various tax reforms, regardless of either the feasibility of a lump sum transfer or the availability of a tax on pollution. The profit wedge that is the difference between the unit price and the unit cost and the marginal environmental damages (MED) becomes important to decidethe direction of a tax reform and is crucial to determine the direction of welfare-improving tax-subsidy schemes. I also show that a tax on pollution (Pigouvian tax) is superior to a tax on intermediate good even in the case of vertically-related oligopolies, because the former always brings in positive welfare effect from the upstream firms`input substitutability, which a tax on intermediate good cannot provide. Some policy implications for ‘reducing environmentally-harmful subsidies’ are also discussed.

Dynamic Welfare Effects of Tax Reform: Case of Korea

Dynamic Welfare Effects of Tax Reform: Case of Korea

Welfare Effects of Tax Reforms

This paper combines the theoretical cognition of welfare measurement with the technique of microsimulation allowing to quantify the welfare effects and the excess burden of tax systems and tax reforms. The newly developed microsimulation module is applied on severeal flat tax reform scenarios which can decrease the excess burden caused by the tax system depending on the tax schedule parameters.

Effects of flat-rate taxes: to what extent does the leisure specification matter?

This paper explores the implications that the specification of the leisure activity has on the effects of alternative forms of taxation in a two-sector endogenous growth model of the US economy. Growth and welfare effects of tax reforms are shown to depend markedly on the leisure specification. We also compute the optimal tax structure of factor incomes and consumption taxation. The optimal tax rate on capital income is rather robust to the leisure specification. However, the balance between consumption and labor income taxation and the effects of shifting to the optimal tax structure vary considerably across leisure specifications.

Capital tax reform, corporate finance, and economic growth and welfare

Recent empirical studies have revealed a strong impact of tax changes on corporate finance. Yet, models of economic growth usually neglect financial structure of the representative firm. In order to investigate whether the consideration of firm finance modifies the estimated outcome of capital tax reforms, a corporate sector is introduced in three popular models of economic growth. The paper explores analytically the impact of taxation on structures of finance and production and gives a quantitative reassessment of growth and welfare effects of tax reforms in the U.S. economy. A general result is that standard models of exogenous and endogenous growth overestimate the growth effect and underestimate the welfare gain from tax reform.

Labor Supply Responses and Welfare Effects of Tax Reforms

During the late 1 980s and early 1 990s, taxation of wage income has undergone a change towards a proportional tax regime in many countries. Our analysis shows that gradual tax reforms in Norway may have removed some of the distortions on worker behavior. Moreover, we find that proportional taxes may reduce the inequality in the distribution of disposable household income. Yet, when the distributional consequences are related to changes in individual welfare, we find that rich households may benefit far more than households at the other tail of the income distribution, because they earn more without any significant increase in effort.