Optimal Taxation Over the Life Cycle

Aspen Gorry and Ezra Oberfield

No 536, 2009 Meeting Papers from Society for Economic Dynamics

Abstract: We derive the optimal income tax schedule for a life cycle labor supply model in which productivity varies exogenously and deterministically. Individuals choose whether and how much to work at each date. The government must finance a given expenditure and does not have access to lump sum taxation. We solve the model using an implementability constraint as in Lucas and Stokey (1983). The average tax rate determines when an individual will work while the marginal tax rate determines how much she will work. In this framework, the optimal tax schedule is progressive (the average tax rate is increasing) at low levels of income, even in the absence of redistributive concerns. Moreover, in contrast to the optimal taxation literature following Mirrlees (1971), the marginal tax rate at the top is strictly positive.

Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://red-files-public.s3.amazonaws.com/meetpapers/2009/paper_536.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Optimal Taxation Over the Life Cycle (2012)
Working Paper: Optimal Taxation over the Life Cycle (2010)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:red:sed009:536

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2009 Meeting Papers from Society for Economic Dynamics Society for Economic Dynamics Marina Azzimonti Department of Economics Stonybrook University 10 Nicolls Road Stonybrook NY 11790 USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Christian Zimmermann ().