Die optimale Besteuerung beeinträchtigt nicht die allokative Effizienz der Marktwirtschaft. Sie korrigiert ungerechte Einkommensvertei- lungen. Nur Pauschalsteuern wären «erstbeste» optimale Steuern. Sie sind aber als Alleinsteuern unrealistisch. Die Finanzwissenschaft sucht daher - bislang überwiegend im angelsächsischen Sprachraum nach «zweitbesten» realistischen Steuersystemen: insbesondere nach einem Verbrauchsteuersystem («optimal commodity taxation») und nach einem Einkommensteuersystem («optimal income taxation»). Mit der Aufarbeitung, der Praktikabilität und der Weiterentwicklung dieser Ansätze befasst sich die vorliegende Arbeit.
This dissertation is on optimal taxation of human capital and tackles the following leading question: How should the tax system be optimally designed to promote the accumulation of human capital to maximize economic well- being? Chapter 2 discusses results derived by Bovenberg and Jacobs (2005) and Richter (2009), who show the education efficiency theorem: In a second-best optimum, the education decision is undistorted if the function expressing the stock of human capital features a constant elasticity with respect to education. I drop this assumption. The household inherits an initial stock of human capital, implying that the aforementioned elasticity is increasing. In a two-period Ramsey model of optimal taxation, I show that the education efficiency theorem does not hold. In a second-best optimum, the discounted marginal social return to education is smaller than the marginal social cost. The household overinvests in human capital relative to thefirst best. The government effectively subsidizes the return to education. Chapter 3 studies a Ramsey optimal taxation model with human capital in an infinite-horizon setting. Contrary to Jones, Manuelli, and Rossi (1997), the human capital production function does not include the current stock of human capital as a production factor. As a result, the return to human capital, namely labor income, does not vanish in equilibrium. In a stationary state, the household underinvests in human capital relative to the first best, i.e., education is distorted. Human capital is effectively taxed. The optimal tax scheme prescribes making the cost of education not fully tax-deductible. Chapter 4 studies second best policies for education, saving, and labour in an OLG model in which endogenous growth results from human capi- tal accumulation. Government expenditures have to be financed by linear instruments so that growth equilibria are inefficient. The inefficiency is exacerbated if selfish individuals externalize the positive effect of education on descendents' productivity. It is shown to be second best to subsidize edu- cation even relative to the first best if the elasticity of the human capital investment function is strictly increasing. The analysis allows one to iden- tify fundamental differences in the efficient dynamic taxation of human and nonhuman capital. Chapter 5 presents a numerical analysis of chapter 4's underlying model with selfish individuals. It turns out that the case for subsidizing education to account for distortionary labor taxation is rather weak. The still dominant justification for subsidizing education is to internalize intergenerational externalities.
We study optimal taxation in the general extensive model: the only decision of the participants in the economy is to choose between working (full time) or staying inactive. People differ in their productivities and in other features which determine their work opportunity costs. The qualitative properties of optimal tax schemes are presented, with an emphasis on the role of heterogeneity in the equity-efficiency tradeoff. When the government has a redistributive stance, there are a number of cases where the low skilled workers face larger financial incentives to work than in the laissez-faire (negative average tax rates). In particular, this occurs whenever the social weights vary continuously with income and the social weight assigned to the less skilled workers is larger than average.
This dissertation is a contribution to the theoretical foundation of optimal tax codes in models with human capital formation. From the economic point of view, a tax system should generate the government's required revenue with as little economic distortion as possible. In the literature this tax problem is referred to as ""Ramsey problem"" following the work of Ramsey (1927) who was the first considering the government's problem of choosing an optimal tax structure by taking into account the equilibrium reactions by the consumer and firms. This dissertation extends the literature on optimal taxation in models with human capital accumulation by introducing some new results concerning optimal taxation of wage income along balanced growth paths and gives some insight into the existence of balanced growth paths in the absence of government bonds. A surprising characterization of optimal taxation out of steady state is given for a fairly standard two-sector growth model with human capital which is an important innovation due to the fact that taxation literature on human capital almost exclusively focuses on steady state results. In focus of this dissertation are also some applications of our model as comprehensive income taxation which is the leading principle underlying most real world income tax systems. A partial theoretical foundation of this system is provided in the framework of dynamic Ramsey taxation literature and it is shown which complications could arise in practice. As an additional contribution to the literature this dissertation characterizes zero tax results geometrically as a condition on indifference curves and the implementability constraint. This characterization in terms of the primal approach is new and represents from a theoretical point of view the common core of optimal taxation. It provides a unified framework for a study of the phenomena in static and dynamic Ramsey problems and also allows to study deviations from zero tax results in more complicated frameworks. I use this new characterization to study optimal taxation in a model of human capital accumulation without commitment.
This paper develops a theory of optimal taxation with behavioral agents. We use a general framework that encompasses a wide range of biases such as misperceptions and internalities. We revisit the three pillars of optimal taxation: Ramsey (linear commodity taxation to raise revenues and redistribute), Pigou (linear commodity taxation to correct externalities), and Mirrlees (nonlinear income taxation). We show how the canonical optimal tax formulas are modified and lead to novel economic insights. We also show how to incorporate nudges in the optimal taxation framework, and jointly characterize optimal taxes and nudges. (JEL D62, D91, H21)
Unions appear to have an aversion to wage disparities among their members, leading to wage compression. This paper analyses the consequences of this for income tax policy. In a two-sector general equilibrium model we highlight the tradeoff between correcting the resource misallocation created by wage compression and the government's distributional objectives. Where the union's aversion to wage dispersion is strong, tax policy can do little to correct the distortion in the supply of trained labour, though it can come closer to achieving distributional aims. Where wage compression is less pronounced, tax policy can have significant effects on resource misallocation, at the expense of its distributional goals.
