scholarly journals Optimal Positive Capital Taxes at Interior Steady States

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 114-150
Author(s):  
Jess Benhabib ◽  
Bálint Szoőke

We generalize recent results of Bassetto and Benhabib (2006) and Straub and Werning (2019) in a neoclassical model with endogenous labor-leisure choice where all agents are allowed to save and accumulate capital. We provide a sufficient condition under which optimal redistributive capital taxes remain at their allowed upper bound forever, even if the resulting equilibrium trajectory converges to a unique steady state with positive and finite consumption, capital, and labor. We then provide an interpretation of our sufficient condition. Using recent evidence on wealth distribution in the United States, we argue that our sufficient condition is empirically plausible. (JEL D31, E21, H21, H23, H25, J22)




1969 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 279-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee C. Soltow

It is commonly thought that income distribution among people became more concentrated after the Civil War and that this direction continued until the turn of the century. We can look methodically at the income tax distributions from the Civil War period and compare them directly with the distributions arising from the income tax after 1912. We also have some data from the abortive income tax of 1894. After examining the various blocks of evidence, the conclusion will be made that inequality among upper-income groups did not increase during this period. It is necessary to emphasize that the present investigation is one of income and not of wealth. It might have been possible for the nonhuman wealth distribution among people to remain constant or to increase in inequality while the personal income distribution was decreasing in inequality.



2002 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
NANCY AMMON JIANAKOPLOS ◽  
VICKIE L. BAJTELSMIT

Using data from the 1998 Survey of Consumer Finances, this paper examines the impact of dual private pension households on the distribution of household wealth in the United States. This paper builds on three lines of previous research: inquiries into ‘assortative mating’, i.e., the tendency for people with similar characteristics to marry; studies emphasizing the importance of pensions as a component of household wealth; and recent research examining how wives' earnings alter the distribution of household income. Evidence of ‘assortative private pensions’, i.e., the tendency for people with private pensions to be married to people with private pensions, is presented. Estimates of the expected value of private pension and social security wealth are added to measures of household non-retirement net worth to obtain the value household wealth. These data indicate that wives' private pensions in dual private pension households contribute marginally to greater equality in the wealth distribution.



1982 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 381-384
Author(s):  
Robert E. Gallman

In his essay in this issue, Stuart Blumin attempts to sort out the debate between Edward Pessen and me. Professor Blumin begins: “Gallman advances the view that inequality between generations—the association between age and wealth—does explain nearly all of the very striking differences in personal fortune that Pessen and others have discovered.” This is not the view I had intended to advance and is certainly not a view I hold. Many factors bore on the wealth distribution of the United States in the “age of the common man.” The age structure of population surely did not account for “nearly all” of the observed wealth differences. (See, for example, my treatment of this subject— based on manuscript census data for 1860—in Davis et al., 1972: 31-32. This discussion treats the influences on wealth holding of age, sex, nativity, color, occupation, and inheritance.) How Professor Blumin came to misunderstand me so badly I cannot say, but I suspect he was misled by my ill-advised comparison of the results drawn from my model with the actual distribution of wealth in 1860 (Gallman, 1978:198).



2019 ◽  
Vol 66 (5) ◽  
pp. 535-558 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan-Francisco Albert ◽  
Nerea Gómez-Fernández ◽  
Carlos Ochando

As an answer to the ?Great Recession? and Zero Lower Bound problem, main central banks had to use unconventional monetary policy (UMP). This research focuses on the distributive effects of these measures on household income and household wealth in the United States of America (USA) and the Eurozone. For this purpose, this paper presents four models that were constructed using the Structural Vector Autoregressive methodology (SVAR). The results suggest that the UMPs applied by the Federal Reserve (FED) in the USA could increase wealth and income inequality through the portfolio channel. However, the same results were not observed in the Eurozone.



2020 ◽  
Vol 110 ◽  
pp. 335-339
Author(s):  
Edward P. Lazear

Willingness to migrate is a necessary but not sufficient condition for migration from an origin to destination country. For the United States and other countries with an excess supply of immigrants, the slot-rationing rule is a key determinant of immigrant composition not captured by supply-based models. A stylized rationing-based model better explains the attainment of immigrants in both the United States and Sweden with the model's two variables explaining over 50 percent of the variation in origin country education attainment and earnings.



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