In the United States structure and equipment capital are effectively taxed at different rates. Recently, President Obama joined the group of policy makers and economists who propose to eliminate these differentials. This paper analyzes the consequences of such a reform using an incomplete...

People are heterogeneous in the skills by which they turn effort into output. A central question in normative public economics is how to redistribute resources from more- to less-skilled individuals efficiently. In addition to income taxation, this paper considers another policy tool of...

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...

This paper shows that capital-skill complementarity provides a quantitatively significant rationale to tax capital for redistributive governments. The optimal capital income tax rate is 60%, which is significantly higher than the optimal rate of 48% in an identically calibrated model without...

This paper shows that capital-skill complementarity provides a quantitatively significant rationale to tax capital for redistributive governments. The optimal capital income tax rate is 60%, which is significantly higher than the optimal rate of 48% in an identically calibrated model without...