Debt-Financed Consumption and a Hybrid Income-Consumption Tax

Implementing a Progressive Consumption Tax

Public debt and aggregate stability with endogenous growth and a state-dependent consumption tax

We analyze how different budgetary rules affect the stability of an economy in a basic endogenous growth model with public debt and a state-dependent consumption tax rate. We show that a discretionary policy implies that the government violates its inter-temporal budget constraint along a balanced growth path, whereas a balanced budget rule guarantees that the economy is stable. A rule based de...

Relative Consumption and Tax Evasion

Relative consumption effects or status concerns that feature jealousy (in the sense of Dupor and Liu, AER 2003) boost consumption expenditure. If consumption is financed by labour income, such status considerations increase labour supply and, hence, the tax base. A higher taxable income, in turn, can make tax evasion more attractive. We show for various specifications of preferences that the ta...

Permanent Income, Current Income, and Consumption

This article reexamines the consistency of the permanent-income hypothesis with aggregate postwar U.S. data. The permanent-income hypothesis is nested within a more general model in which a fraction of income accrues to individuals who consume their current income rather than their permanent income. This fraction is estimated to be about 50%, indicating a substantial departure from the permanen...

Consumption and Debt Aversion: An Experimental Study

This paper tests how subjects behave in an intertemporal consumption/saving experiment when borrowing is allowed and whether subjects treat debt differently than savings. Two treatments create environments where either saving or borrowing is required for optimal consumption. Since both treatments share the same optimal consumption levels, actual consumption choices can be directly compared acro...