This paper characterizes optimal income taxes in a dynamic economy where human capital is unobservable and the government is restricted to use taxes that depend only on current income. I show that unobservability of human capital tends to decrease the labor wedge, while the effect on the human capital wedge is uncertain. I also analyze the relationship between optimal taxes in economies with and without endogenous human capital and identify two qualitative reasons why the optimal tax codes will differ. I perform numerical simulations to calculate the quantitative relevance of endogenous human capital formation for optimal tax policy. I find that endogenous human capital lowers marginal tax rates by about 9% on average, as compared with a static model without human capital. (Copyright: Elsevier)
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Article provided by Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics in its journal Review of Economic Dynamics.
Volume (Year): 9 (2006) Issue (Month): 4 (October) Pages: 612-639 Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML,
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Find related papers by JEL classification: E6 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook H2 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue
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