Optimal Taxation of Entrepreneurial Capital and Financial Assets with Private Information

具有私人信息的创业资本和金融资产的最优税收

• 批准号: 0617774
• 负责人: Stefania Albanesi
• 金额: $ 4.55万
• 依托单位: Columbia University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2006
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2006-07-01 至 2010-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0617774&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Optimal; Taxation; Entrepreneurial; Capital; Financial

The purpose of this project is to study the optimal taxation of entrepreneurial capital and financial assets in private information economies. The optimal setting of taxes on capital income is a classic question in macroeconomics and public finance. The interest in entrepreneurial capital is motivated by the observation that this form of capital accounts for a disproportionately large fraction of household wealth in the US economy. The investigator maintains that the main source of risk for entrepreneurs is capital risk and that incentive problems due to informational frictions play a central role in entrepreneurial activity. To characterize the optimal tax system, she first derives the constrained Pareto optimal allocation given the informational frictions, and then constructs a set of taxes that implements such an allocation. The resulting tax system optimizes the trade-off between insurance and incentives. The private information determines a wedge between the marginal benefit of an additional unit of wealth and the marginal utility of current consumption at the constrained Pareto optimal allocation. The preliminary work derives an important result: this intertermporal wedge can be negative for entrepreneurial capital and, in this case, the optimal marginal capital tax is progressive. By contrast, in private information economies with labor income risk, the intertemporal wedge is always positive and the optimal marginal asset tax is regressive. This project illustrates the different incentive effects of capital and other assets that underpin this result and also give rise to a prescription for differential asset taxation. The proposed new work will extends the current analysis in a number of directions. Theoretically, the investigator plans to derive general conditions under which the intertermporal wedge on entrepreneurial capital is negative and explore the implications for the limiting distribution of consumption. We will analyze optimal taxes for market structures that allow for private contracts between entrepreneurs and other agents in the economy. She also plans to conduct a quantitative analysis of optimal tax systems, using microeconomic data on entrepreneurial earnings to calibrate capital risk.The intended contribution of this study is twofold. The focus on economies with capital risk provides novel insights on the dynamic distortions resulting from informational frictions and, potentially, for long run inequality. As is well known, in economies with labor income risk optimal allocations display decreasing consumption over agents' lifetime and generally predict that consumption and wealth inequality should grow without bound. The project explores positive effects of capital on entrepreneurial incentives that may temper these extreme implications. This investigator is also the first to propose a theory of differential asset taxation based on informational frictions. This does not arise in economies with labor income risk, where the qualitative properties of optimal capital income taxes do not depend on the nature of the asset. Finally, the joint predictions for optimal allocations and taxes can provide the basis for a more realistic quantitative analysis that could enable a comprehensive assessment of actual systems of taxation of household wealth in comparison with the optimal ones.Broader Impacts The results of this study will be of interest to researchers focusing on dynamic mechanism design, given the novelty of the incentive problem with capital risk, as well as to researchers in macroeconomics and in public finance. Moreover, given the ongoing public debate on tax reform in the US and in other countries, the findings from this project will naturally be interesting for policymakers. The research will also be integrated with the investigator's teaching, especially at the graduate level. It is expected that graduate research assistants will be introduced to important research skills and potential research topics to develop on their own.

本项目的目的是研究私营信息经济中企业资本和金融资产的最佳征税问题。资本所得税的最优设置是宏观经济学和公共财政学中的一个经典问题。对创业资本的兴趣是由这样一种观察引起的：在美国经济中，这种形式的资本占家庭财富的比例不成比例地大。 研究者认为，企业家的主要风险来源是资本风险，由于信息摩擦引起的激励问题在创业活动中起着核心作用。为了描述最优税收制度，她首先推导出信息摩擦下的约束帕累托最优分配，然后构建了一组实现这种分配的税收。由此产生的税收制度优化了保险和激励之间的权衡。私人信息决定了一个楔子之间的边际效益的额外单位的财富和边际效用的当前消费在约束帕累托最优配置。初步的工作得出一个重要的结果：这个intertemporal楔形可以为负的创业资本，在这种情况下，最优的边际资本税是累进的。相反，在有劳动收入风险的私人信息经济中，跨期楔形总是正的，最优边际资产税是递减的。该项目说明了资本和其他资产的不同激励效应，这些激励效应是这一结果的基础，也导致了差别资产税的处方。拟议的新工作将在若干方向上扩展目前的分析。从理论上讲，研究者计划得出一般条件下，intermporal楔对创业资本是负面的，并探讨消费的限制分配的影响。我们将分析市场结构的最优税收，允许企业家和经济中的其他代理人之间的私人合同。 她还计划对最优税收制度进行定量分析，利用企业收入的微观经济数据来校准资本风险。对具有资本风险的经济体的关注为信息摩擦造成的动态扭曲以及长期不平等提供了新的见解。众所周知，在具有劳动收入风险的经济体中，最优分配显示出在代理人的一生中消费减少，并且通常预测消费和财富不平等应该无限制地增长。该项目探讨了资本对企业家激励的积极影响，可能会缓和这些极端的影响。 这位研究者也是第一个提出基于信息摩擦的差别资产税收理论的人。这在有劳动收入风险的经济体中不会出现，因为最优资本所得税的定性属性不取决于资产的性质。最后，对最优分配和税收的联合预测可以为更现实的定量分析提供基础，从而能够对家庭财富的实际税收制度进行全面评估，并与最优税收制度进行比较。更广泛的影响本研究的结果将引起关注动态机制设计的研究人员的兴趣，因为考虑到资本风险激励问题的新奇，以及宏观经济学和公共财政学的研究人员。此外，考虑到美国和其他国家正在进行的关于税收改革的公开辩论，本项目的研究结果自然会引起政策制定者的兴趣。研究还将与调查员的教学相结合，特别是在研究生一级。预计研究生研究助理将被介绍给重要的研究技能和潜在的研究课题，以发展自己。