In a model with ex-ante homogenous households, earnings risk and a general earnings function, we derive the optimal linear labor tax rate and optimal linear education subsidies. The optimal income tax trades off social insurance against incentives to work and to invest in human capital....

This paper analyzes optimal linear taxes on labor income and savings in a standard two-period life-cycle model with endogenous leisure demands in both periods and non-insurable income risks. Households are subject to skill shocks in both periods of the life-cycle. We allow for completely general...

To analyze the optimal social insurance package, we set up a two-period life-cycle model with risky human capital investment in which the government has access to labor taxation, education subsidies and capital taxation. Social insurance is provided by redistributive labor taxation. Moreover,...

This paper reviews the literature on optimal taxation of labour income and the empirical work on labour supply and the elasticity of taxable income in Sweden. It also presents an overview of Swedish taxation of labour income, offers calculations on the development in effective marginal tax rates...

The paper studies the effect that skilled labour mobility has on efficient education policy. The model is one of two periods in which a representative taxpayer decides on labour, education, and saving. The government can only use linear tax and subsidy instruments. It is shown that the mobility...

There is often a gap between the prescriptions of an "optimal" tax system and actual tax systems, some of which can be neither efficient economically nor efficient at redistributing income. With a focus on personal income taxes, this paper reviews the political economics literature on tax...

We analyze optimal taxation of labor and capital income in a life-cycle framework with idiosyncratic income risk. We provide a novel decomposition of labor income tax formulas into a redistribution and an insurance component. The latter is independent of the social welfare function and...

We consider the issue of steady-state optimal factor taxation in a Ramsey-type dynamic general equilibrium setting with two distinct distortions: i) taxes on capital and labour are the only available tax instruments for raising revenues, and ii) labour markets are subject to a static...

A relatively high labor-intensity in government-run entities need not imply slack in their organization. Rather, it is a rational reaction to various forms of wage tax advantage that the public sector has over private firms. Even though an unequal tax treatment of public and private sectors...