This paper analyses optimal income taxes over the business cycle under a balanced-budget restriction, for low, middle and high income agents. A model incorporating capital-skill complementarity in pro- duction and differential access to capital and labour markets is de- veloped to capture the...

This paper undertakes a normative investigation of the quantita- tive properties of optimal tax smoothing in a business cycle model with state contingent debt, capital-skill complementarity, endogenous skill formation and stochastic shocks to public consumption as well as total factor and...

This paper considers the role of human capital accumulation of agents differentiated by skill type in the joint determination of social mobility and the skill premium. Our approach allows us to evaluate the dynamic e¤ects of tax reforms and education spending policies on economic e¢ ciency as...

In this paper we examine the importance of imperfect competition in product and labour markets in determining the long-run welfare e¤ects of tax reforms assuming agent heterogeneneity in capital hold- ings. Each of these market failures, independently, results in welfare losses for at least a...

The stylized facts suggest a negative relationship between tax progres- sivity and the skill premium from the early 1960s until the early 1990s, and a positive one thereafter. They also generally imply rising tax progressivity, except for the 1980s. In this paper, we ask whether optimal tax...

This paper addresses the issue on whether tax reforms consistent with lower public debt-to-GDP in the long-run can lead to a more efficient and equitable economy. To this end we solve a heterogeneous agent model comprised of a government, a representative capitalist and representative skilled...

We incorporate an uncoordinated redistributive struggle for extra fiscal privileges into an otherwise standard dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model. The main aim is to get model-consistent quantitative evidence of the extent of rent seeking. Our work is motivated by the common belief...

This paper revisits the relationship between fiscal size and economic growth. Our work differs from the empirical growth literature because this relationship depends explicitly on the efficiency of the public sector. We use a sample of 64 countries, both developed and developing, in four 5-year...

In this paper, we quantitatively assess the welfare implications of alternative public education spending rules. To this end, we employ a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model in which human capital externalities and public education expenditures, financed by distort- ing taxes, enhance...

This paper investigates the importance of political ideology and opportunism in the choice of the tax structure. In particular, we examine the effects of cabinet ideology and elections on the distribution of the tax burden across factors of production and consumption for 21 OECD countries over...