Wealth inequality is currently rising in rich countries. Expectations that ever more intelligent machines might replace people’s jobs amplify the concerns about an increasingly unequal wealth distribution. We examine how capital tax-financed public investment affects the distribution of wealth when the substitutability between capital and labor changes. We consider a setting with a labor-augmen...

Inheritances create a second distinguishing characteristic of individuals, in addition to earning abilities. We incorporate this fact into an optimum income taxation model with bequests motivated by joy of giving, and show that a tax on inherited wealth is equivalent to a tax on expenditures, i. e. to a uniform tax on consumption plus bequests. These taxes have a positive effect on intertempora...

This paper studies the optimal direct/indirect tax mix problem when individuals differ in several unobservable characteristics (productivity and endowments). It presents general expressions for the optimal commodity tax rates and proves that contrary to Atkinson and Stiglitz’s (1976) result, differential commodity taxation remains a useful instrument of tax policy even if preferences are separa...

in this paper, forecasting error for state tax revenues is assessed. for this purpose, using the regression equation, statistical index, and mean percent error, root mean square error, mean absolute percent error and error analysis of tile inequality coefficients are applied on anticipated revenue from taxes on legal entities, income taxes, wealth tax, taxes on imports and taxes on consumption ...

This paper formulates an overlapping generations model with both life–cycle saving and altruistic bequests. For a given distribution of earning abilities, the model generates a stationary steady–state capital–to–labor ratio for the economy as a whole and a stationary distribution of net worth among households. We calibrate the model, using the 1995 Survey of Consumer Finances to fix the distrib...

The rapid increase of wealth inequality in the past few decades is one of the most disturbing social and economic issues of our time. Studying its origin and underlying mechanisms is essential for policy aiming to control and even reverse this trend. In that context, controlling the distribution of income, using income tax or other macroeconomic policy instruments, is generally perceived as eff...