Market Power, Taxes and Inequality

摘要本项目研究缓解企业市场力量成本和收入不平等的政策干预。这项研究的动机是观察到美国的公司利润和集中度处于历史最高水平，收入不平等正在加剧。一个重要的问题是理解企业集中度和盈利能力对财富和收入不平等的影响。企业的市场力量产生了效率与权益的权衡。生产效率要求劳动力和资本流向更大、更有利可图的公司。这反过来又进一步增加了这些公司的利润，并在很大程度上有利于富裕的个人，从而加剧了财富不平等。本项目使用细粒度数据和市场力量与不平等的模型来检验这种权衡的影响。具体而言，本项目评估了产品市场干预的后果，如销售补贴和税收、对企业规模和加价的限制、反垄断执法，以及旨在减少加价的分配成本的利润税和所得税。该项目采用了一个动态一般均衡模型，参数化再现了美国财富和收入不平等的突出事实，以及加价和产品市场集中度。该研究考虑了多种市场结构，包括产品市场中异质私营企业和公司企业之间的垄断和寡头垄断竞争，以及投入市场中的垄断力量。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

AbstractThis project studies policy interventions that alleviate the costs of firm market power and income inequality. This research is motivated by the observation that firm profits and concentration in the United States are at their highest levels in history, and income inequality is rising. An important issue is understanding the effects of firm concentration and profitability on wealth and income inequality. Firm market power generates an efficiency-equity trade-off. Production efficiency requires that labor and capital flow towards larger, more profitable firms. This in turn further increases these firms’ profits and largely benefits wealthier individuals, contributing to the wealth inequality. This project examines the effects of this trade-off using granular data and models of market power and inequality.Specifically, this project evaluates the consequences of product market interventions such as sales subsidies and taxes, limits on firm size and markups, anti-trust enforcement, as well as profit and income taxes aimed at reducing the distributional costs of markups. The project employs a dynamic general equilibrium model parameterized to reproduce salient facts about U.S. wealth and income inequality, as well as markups and product market concentration. The research considers a variety of market structures, including monopolistic and oligopolistic competition between heterogeneous private businesses and corporate firms in the product market, as well as monopsony power in the input market.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.