Can Taxes Stabilize the Economy in the Presence of Consumption Externalities?

Teresa Lloyd-Braga and Leonor Modesto

No 6876, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Considering a finance constrained economy, we discuss the stabilization role of variable labour and capital income taxes under a balanced-budget rule in the presence of consumption externalities of the "keeping up with the Joneses" type. We find that sufficiently procyclical labor and/or capital income taxes are able to ensure saddle path stability eliminating belief-driven cyclical fluctuations. Moreover, for higher values of consumption externalities, saddle path stability can only be reached with more procyclical labor or capital income taxation. We therefore conclude that finance constrained models with "keeping up with the Joneses" preferences call for traditional Keynesian demand-management policies in order to stabilize business cycle fluctuations.

Keywords: indeterminacy; consumption externalities; capital and labor income taxation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E32 E62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23 pages
Date: 2012-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dge and nep-mac
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published - published in K. Nishimura et al. (eds.), Sunspots and Non-Linear Dynamics, Studies in Economic Theory 31, Springer 2017.

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