This paper is an attempt to analyse the tax leakage in the broader context of fiscal crisis in Kerala, highlighting the relationship between the two. Tax leakage by causing a revenue drain may adversely affect the primary account position and thus may indirectly influence the fiscal...

Two results characterize previous studies of optimal capital income taxation: (i) In order to avoid distorting capital accumulation incentives the ex ante capital tax rate should be set to zero in the long run and ii) by varying the ex post capital tax rate governments may be able to insulate...

This paper describes the behavior of tax policies under incomplete financial markets. The government finances a stochastic stream of expenditures by collecting the capital income and the labor income taxes, and issuing a one-period bond which pays state-contingent returns. We show that putting...

We construct and calibrate a general equilibrium business cycle model with unemployment and precautionary saving. We compute the cost of business cycles and locate the optimum in a set of simple cyclical fiscal policies. Our economy exhibits productivity shocks, giving firms an incentive to hire...

The analysis provides a new explanation for two widespread problems concerning European unemployment policy: the disappointingly small effect of many past reform measures on unemployment, and the political difficulties in implementing more extensive reform programs. We argue that the heart of...

Using a simple pure-exchange overlapping generations model characterized by financial repression, purposeful government expenditures and cost of tax collection, we analyze whether financial repression can be explained by the cost of raising taxes. We show that with public expenditures affecting...

This paper analyzes the dynamic politico-economic equilibrium of a model where repeated voting on social security and the evolution of household characteristics in general equilibrium are mutually affected over time. In particular, we incorporate within-cohort heterogeneity in a two-period...

We investigate the welfare implications of changing the mix between capital and labor taxes for a model economy in which heterogeneous households face uninsurable labor income risk. The stochastic process for labor earnings we construct is consistent with empirical estimates of earnings risk,...

This paper incorporates a distortionary tax into the microfoundations of money framework and revisits the optimum quantity of money. An optimal policy may consist of both a positive tax rate and a positive nominal interest rate: if the buyer’s surplus share is inefficiently small, the...