We examine the optimal taxation of capital in a general-equilibrium heterogeneousagent economy with uninsurable idiosyncratic investment or capital-income risk. Our framework combines elements from the Ramsey and the Mirrlees traditions, as we consider a linear tax but also introduce lump-sum transfers. The tractability of our model allows for an analytic characterization of the long run, as we...

This paper analyzes the impact of pollution and abatement policy within a stochastic endogenous growth model. The agents have environmental preferences, but they neglect their individual contribution to aggregate abatement. Therefore, environmental care is done by the government and financed via income taxation and government bonds. Equilibrium growth depends on environmental preferences, perce...

According to conventional wisdom internationally mobile capital should not be taxed or should be taxed at a lower rate than labour. An important underlying assumption behind this view is that there are no market imperfections, in particular that labour markets clear competitively. At least for Europe, which has been suffering from high unemployment for a long time, this assumption does not seem...

Fundamental to any theory of capital taxation is a description of individual savings behavior. Successful descriptions of savings behavior have often resorted to the habit formation hypothesis. This paper studies the effect of habit formation on optimal capital taxes in a dynamic Mirrleesian model. We make three distinct contributions. First, we decompose intertemporal wedges (implicit capital ...

This paper analyzes optimal linear taxes on capital and labor incomes in a life-cycle model of human capital investment, financial savings, and labor supply with heterogenous individuals. A dual income tax with positive marginal tax rates on not only labor but also capital income is optimal. The key function of the tax on capital income is to reduce labor tax distortions on human capital accumu...

We investigate the optimal design of bank regulation by developing a tractable general equilibrium model of competitive banks who are exposed to idiosyncratic and aggregate risk. A comparison of the autarkic equilibrium allocations with the efficient allocations reveals that the autarkic economy underinvests in production when aggregate risk is below a threshold, but overinvests in production w...