This paper poses the following question: Is it possible to improve welfare by increasing taxes and throwing away the revenues? This paper demonstrates that the answer to this question is "yes." We show that there may be welfare gains from taxing capital income even when the additional capital income tax revenues are wasted or consumed by a selfish government. Previous literature has assumed that government expenditures are exogenous or productive, or allowed for redistribution of tax revenue either via lump-sum transfers, unemployment compensation or other redistributive schemes. In our model a selfish government taxes capital above a given threshold and then consumes the proceeds. This raises the before-tax real return on capital and and thereby enhances the ability of agents to self-insure when they are long-term unemployed and have low savings. Since all agents have positive probability of finding themselves in that state there are cases where all agents prefer a selfish government to no government at all.
内容記述
本文フィルはリンク先を参照のこと
雑誌名
Discussion paper series. CIRJE-F
巻
CIRJE-F-436
発行年
2006-09
書誌レコードID
AA11450569
フォーマット
application/pdf
日本十進分類法
330
出版者
日本経済国際共同センター
出版者別名
Center for International Research on the Japanese Economy
The Welfare Enhancing Effects of a Selfish Government in the Presence of Uninsuarable, Idiosyncratic Risk
