This paper develops a realistic, tractable theoretical model that can be used to investigate socially-optimal capital taxation. We present a dynamic model of savings and bequests with heterogeneous random tastes for bequests to children and for wealth per se. We derive formulas for optimal tax...

With heterogeneity in both skills and discount factors, the Atkinson-Stiglitz theorem that savings should not be taxed does not hold. We consider a model with heterogeneity of preferences at each earnings level. With some assumptions on the equilibrium, a small savings tax on high earners and a...

International capital mobility has typically been ignored in discussions of the welfare effects of the capital income tax. In the a typical analysis which does consider the open economy it is recognized that highly-elastic capital flows could significantly alter the usual conclusions. While...

Security markets between generations are incomplete due to a biological trading constraint' that prevents living generations from negotiating contingent contracts with the unborn. This paper shows, however, that government policy can be used to replicate the trades that would have occurred if...

Going from low inflation to price stability involves a short term loss (associated with the" higher unemployment rate required to reduce the inflation) and results in a series of welfare gains" in all future years. The primary source of these gains is the reduction in the distortions that...

This paper develops an overlapping generations general equilibrium growth model with an explicit characterization of the role of capital goods in the production process. The model is rich enough in structure to evaluate and measure simultaneously the different distortions associated with capital...

We examine a prominent justification for capital income taxation: goods preferred by those with high ability ought to be taxed. In an environment where commodity taxes are allowed to be nonlinear functions of income and consumption, we derive an analytical expression that reveals the forces...

This lecture examines the effects of tax policy and social security retirement benefits on capital accumulation and economic welfare. The paper begins by examining how capital income taxes reduce the real return to savers and then discusses the welfare loss of capital income taxation relative to...

We characterize the optimal linear tax on capital in an Overlapping Generations model with two period lived households facing uninsurable idiosyncratic labor income risk. The Ramsey government internalizes the general equilibrium feedback of private precautionary saving. For logarithmic utility...

This paper is an attempt to assess the effect of capital gains taxation on non-Austrian assets, such as claims to profits of continuing enterprises. As compared to taxation on an accrual basis, the capital gains tax discourages sales of appreciated assets. This is the quot;lock-inquot; effect....