Stigma, Optimal Income Taxation, and the Optimal Welfare Program: A Numerical Simulation Approach
Stigma, Optimal Income Taxation, and the Optimal Welfare Program: A Numerical Simulation Approach
复制标题
耻辱、最优所得税和最优福利计划：数值模拟方法
DOI：
10.1177/1091142109358704
复制
发表时间：
2010
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Zhiyong An
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Zhiyong An
本文整合了福利耻辱理论和最优所得税理论。我们在统一框架内研究最优所得税和最优福利计划，同时考虑到福利耻辱。在我们的框架中，假设政府有两种政策工具，即一般所得税和福利计划。假设个人在工资（技能）和福利耻辱这两个维度上具有异质性。政府无法观察到个人的这两个特征。假设每个人都采用给定的所得税表和福利计划参数，并做出劳动力供应决策以最大化其效用。假设政府选择最优所得税表和最优福利计划，以在其自身收入预算约束以及个人对所得税表和福利计划参数的行为反应的前提下最大化社会福利函数。由于模型无法解析求解，我们采用数值模拟的方法。我们的模拟表明（I）政府同时提供负所得税表和福利计划是最优的，这与 An 在我们模型的简化版本中获得的理论结果一致，（2）美国的实际福利计划可能没有最优福利计划那么慷慨。
This article integrates the theory of welfare stigma and the theory of optimal income taxation. We study optimal income taxation and an optimal welfare program within a unified framework while taking welfare stigma into account. In our framework, the government is assumed to have two policy instruments, namely general income taxation and a welfare program. Individuals are assumed to be heterogeneous along two dimensions, namely wages (skill) and welfare stigma. The government cannot observe the two characteristics of individuals. Each individual is assumed to take the income tax schedule and the parameters of the welfare program as given and make labor supply decisions to maximize his utility. The government is assumed to choose both an optimal income tax schedule and an optimal welfare program so as to maximize a social welfare function subject to its own revenue budget constraint and individuals' behavioral response to the income tax schedule and the parameters of the welfare program. As the model cannot be solved analytically, we take a numerical simulation approach. Our simulations show that (I) it is optimal for the government to offer both a negative income tax schedule and a welfare program, which is consistent with the theoretical result obtained by An in a much-simplified version of our model, and (2) the actual welfare program in the United States might be less generous than the optimal welfare program.