Macroeconomic Effects of Capital Tax Rate Changes

Saroj Bhattarai, Jae Won Lee, Woong Yong Park and Choongryul Yang

No 391, Globalization Institute Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas

Abstract: We study aggregate, distributional and welfare effects of a permanent reduction in the capital tax rate in a quantitative equilibrium model with capital-skill complementarity. Such a tax reform leads to expansionary long-run aggregate effects, but is coupled with an increase in wage and income inequality. Moreover, the expansionary aggregate effects are smaller when distortionary labor or consumption tax rates have to increase to finance the capital tax rate cut, driven by effects on labor supply decisions. An extension to a model with heterogeneous households shows that consumption inequality also increases in the long run, which leads to a further rise in wage inequality. We study transition dynamics and show that joint modeling of monetary and fiscal policy response is important for analyzing short-run effects. Finally, we contrast the long-term aggregate welfare gains with short-term losses, regardless of how the tax cut is financed. In the model with heterogeneous households, we additionally show that welfare gains for the skilled go together with welfare losses for the unskilled.

Keywords: Capital tax rate; Capital-skill complementarity; Inequality; Transition dynamics; Welfare implications (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E31 E52 E58 E62 E63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 105
Date: 2020-06-26
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dge, nep-mac and nep-pbe
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Macroeconomic Effects of Capital Tax Rate Changes (2022)
Working Paper: Macroeconomic effects of capital tax rate changes (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:feddgw:88259

DOI: 10.24149/gwp391

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