In a second-best optimal growth setup with only factor taxes as available instruments, is it optimal to fully replace capital by labor income taxation? The answer is generally positive based on Chamley, Judd, Lucas, and many follow-up studies. In the present paper, we revisit this important tax reform-related issue by developing a human capitalbased endogenous growth framework with frictional l...

We set up an OLG-model, where households both choose human capital investment and decide on investing their endogenous savings in a portfolio of riskless and risky assets, exposing them to (aggregate) wage and capital risks due to technological shocks. We derive the optimal public policy mix of taxation and education policy. We show that risks can be efficiently diversified between private and ...

This paper provides a new economic interpretation of the well-known dynamic optimal taxation principle that capital income should not be taxed in the steady state. We show that the result is related to the minimization of distortions at the intratemporal margin. When every factor of production can be taxed at the optimal rate, capital income should not be taxed in the steady state. But when the...

We analytically and quantitatively examine a prominent justi…cation for capital income taxation: goods preferred by those with high ability ought to be taxed. We study an environment where commodity taxes are allowed to be nonlinear functions of income and consumption and …nd that, when ability is positively related to a preference for a good, optimal marginal commodity taxes on this good may b...

According to the existing literature, capital taxes should not be imposed in the presence of optimal profit taxation in either unionised or competitive labour markets. We show that this conclusion does not hold for an economy with dual labour markets, where the competitive wage rate provides the outside option for unionised workers. Even with non-distortionary profit taxation it is optimal for ...

This paper investigates the interaction among a firm’s knowledge capital, growth opportunities, earning dynamics, and optimal leverage level. Under the corporate taxation and personal taxation framework, by assuming knowledge capital positively affects the realization of a firm’s growth opportunities, I find a positive relation between a firm’s optimal debt level and its knowledge capital. Mean...

The impact of fiscal activity on human capital formation has often been analyzed with regard to the expenditure side of the budget, i.e. the subsidization of (higher) education. Recent contributions have increasingly focused on the effect of taxation on human capital accumulation. Less attention is given to the simultaneous effect of both subsidization and taxation on human capital accumulation...