Catching up with the Keynesians

Lars Ljungqvist and Harald Uhlig ()

No 259, SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance from Stockholm School of Economics

Abstract: This paper examines the role for tax policies in productivity-shock driven economies with "catching-up-with -the-Joneses" utility functions. The optimal tax policy is shown to affect the economy counter-cyclically via procyclical taxes, i.e., "cooling down" the economy with higher taxes when it is "overheating" in booms and "stimulating" the economy with lower taxes in recessions to keep consumption up. Thus, models with catching-up-with-the-Joneses utility functions call for traditional Keynesian demand management policies. Parameter values from Campbell and Cochrane (1995) are also used to illustrate that the necessary labor taxes can be very high, in the order of 50 percent. However, Campbell and Cochrane's nonlinear version of the benchmark level in the catching-up-with-the-Joneses preferences has the implication that consumption bunching can be welfare enhancing.

Keywords: Catching-up-with-the-Joneses preferences; fiscal policy; taxation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E21 E62 E63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29 pages
Date: 1998-09-28
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dge
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Citations:

Forthcoming in American Economic Review.

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Related works:
Working Paper: Catching with the Keynesians (1996)
Working Paper: Catching up with the Keynesians (1996)
Working Paper: Catching up with the Keynesians (1996)
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