IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jpolec/v116y2008i1p82-112.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

On the Optimality of the Friedman Rule with Heterogeneous Agents and Nonlinear Income Taxation

Author

Listed:
  • Carlos E. da Costa
  • Iván Werning

Abstract

We study the optimal inflation tax in an economy with heterogeneous agents subject to nonlinear taxation of labor income. We find that the Friedman rule is Pareto efficient when combined with a nondecreasing labor income tax. In addition, the optimum for a utilitarian social welfare function lies on this region of the Pareto frontier. The welfare costs from inflation are bounded below by the area under the demand curve. (c) 2008 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

Suggested Citation

  • Carlos E. da Costa & Iván Werning, 2008. "On the Optimality of the Friedman Rule with Heterogeneous Agents and Nonlinear Income Taxation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 116(1), pages 82-112, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jpolec:v:116:y:2008:i:1:p:82-112
    DOI: 10.1086/529397
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/529397
    File Function: link to full text
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/529397?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Chari, V. V. & Christiano, Lawrence J. & Kehoe, Patrick J., 1996. "Optimality of the Friedman rule in economies with distorting taxes," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(2-3), pages 203-223, April.
    2. Drew Fudenberg & Jean Tirole, 1991. "Game Theory," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262061414, April.
    3. Saez, Emmanuel, 2002. "The desirability of commodity taxation under non-linear income taxation and heterogeneous tastes," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(2), pages 217-230, February.
    4. Correia, Isabel & Teles, Pedro, 1996. "Is the Friedman rule optimal when money is an intermediate good?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 223-244, October.
    5. Atkinson, A. B. & Stiglitz, J. E., 1976. "The design of tax structure: Direct versus indirect taxation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 6(1-2), pages 55-75.
    6. Guidotti, Pablo E. & Vegh, Carlos A., 1993. "The optimal inflation tax when money reduces transactions costs : A reconsideration," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 189-205, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Firouz Gahvari & Luca Micheletto, 2019. "Heterogeneity, monetary policy, Mirrleesian taxes, and the Friedman rule," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 67(4), pages 983-1018, June.
    2. Beatrix Paal & Bruce D. Smith, 2013. "The sub-optimality of the Friedman rule and the optimum quantity of money," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 14(2), pages 911-948, November.
    3. Firouz Gahvari & Luca Micheletto, 2012. "Monetary Policy and Redistribution: What can or cannot be Neutralized with Mirrleesian Taxes," CESifo Working Paper Series 3711, CESifo.
    4. varelas, erotokritos, 2013. "A Comment on Chicago Rule, Chicago School, and Commercial Bank Seigniorage," MPRA Paper 48770, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Heer, Burkhard, 2003. "Welfare costs of inflation in a dynamic economy with search unemployment," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 255-272, November.
    6. Chari, V.V. & Kehoe, Patrick J., 1999. "Optimal fiscal and monetary policy," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 26, pages 1671-1745, Elsevier.
    7. Alberto Petrucci, 2015. "Deviating from the Friedman Rule: A Good Idea with Illegal Immigration?," Working Papers CELEG 1502, Dipartimento di Economia e Finanza, LUISS Guido Carli.
    8. De Fiore, Fiorella & Teles, Pedro, 2003. "The optimal mix of taxes on money, consumption and income," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(4), pages 871-887, May.
    9. Wang, Gaowang & Zou, Heng-fu, 2020. "Optimal fiscal and monetary policy in economies with capital," MPRA Paper 102753, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Eduardo Olaberría, 2011. "The Optimal Inflation Tax in the Presence of Imperfect Deposit – Currency Substitution," Working Papers Central Bank of Chile 619, Central Bank of Chile.
    11. Gahvari, Firouz & Micheletto, Luca, 2014. "The Friedman rule in an overlapping-generations model with nonlinear taxation and income misreporting," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 10-23.
    12. Alberto Petrucci, 2011. "Nonoptimality of the Friedman Rule with Capital Income Taxation," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 43(1), pages 163-183, February.
    13. Soldatos, Gerasimos T. & Varelas, Erotokritos, 2014. "The Chicago Tradition and Commercial Bank Seigniorage," MPRA Paper 57721, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Johann Brunner & Susanne Pech, 2013. "Taxing bequests and consumption in the steady state," Economics working papers 2013-15, Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.
    15. Louis Kaplow, 2010. "Optimal Control of Externalities in the Presence of Income Taxation," STICERD - Public Economics Programme Discussion Papers 02, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE.
    16. Sanz Labrador, Ismael & Sanz-Sanz, José Félix, 2013. "Política fiscal y crecimiento económico: consideraciones microeconómicas y relaciones macroeconómicas," Macroeconomía del Desarrollo 5367, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL).
    17. N. Gregory Mankiw & Ricardo Reis, 2002. "Sticky Information versus Sticky Prices: A Proposal to Replace the New Keynesian Phillips Curve," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(4), pages 1295-1328.
    18. Karl Schulz, 2021. "Redistribution of Return Inequality," CESifo Working Paper Series 8996, CESifo.
    19. Ritter Moritz, 2010. "The Optimum Quantity of Money Revisited: Distortionary Taxation in a Search Model of Money," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 10(1), pages 1-26, June.
    20. Schmitt-Grohe, Stephanie & Uribe, Martin, 2004. "Optimal fiscal and monetary policy under imperfect competition," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 183-209, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ucp:jpolec:v:116:y:2008:i:1:p:82-112. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Journals Division (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JPE .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.