We analyze the implications of the decline in labor’s share in national income for optimal Ramsey taxation. It is optimal to accompany the decline in labor share by raising capital taxes only if the labor share is falling because of a decline in competition or other mechanisms that raise the...

The contribution Bach, Corneo, and Steiner (2008) has argued that the richʺ do not pay taxes adequately in relation to their income, finding, for instance, an effective tax rate of only 38.1% for the 0.001% fractile of German income taxpayers in 2001. This result contrasts sharply with the...

Taking a piecemeal tax reform approach to tax analysis in the spirit of Feldstein (1976), we establish a framework for assessing perturbations of the income tax schedule. It decomposes a reform into a change in tax level and a structural reform part. Focussing on the latter, the analysis singles...

Beyond the traditional debates over information exchange vs flat taxation at source, legislative advances have produced interesting innovations and suggestions concerning how to tax international savings. We examine some of these advances, which we then use to set forth and investigate a...

Shifting intellectual property (IP) rights across jurisdictions is a well-known strategy of multinationals to reduce corporate income taxation. We investigate the extent to which the flows of remunerations for the use of IP rights are affected by differences in corporate income and withholding...

In the present paper we extend the classical tax-competition framework of Zodrow and Mieszkowski (1986) by modelling involuntary unemployment and by allowing for labour taxation as a second source of public funds. For a large class of production functions (including CES), it turns out that tax...

This paper studies the aggregate and distributional implications of Markov-perfect taxspending policy in a neoclassical growth model with capitalists and workers. Focusing on the long run, our main findings are: (i) it is optimal for a benevolent government, which cares equally about its...

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...

Social values shape policy outcomes. We examine the role of postmaterialism, a widely used concept in the social sciences, for the mix of capital and labour taxation chosen by a society. Following political scientist Inglehart, we define the degree of postmaterialism as the relative importance...