IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/eui/euiwps/eco2003-13.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Redistributive Policies through Taxation: Theory and Evidence

Author

Listed:
  • Charles GRANT
  • Christos KOULOVATIANOS
  • Alexander MICHAELIDES
  • Mario PADULA

Abstract

Increasing marginal tax rates and making payments to the poor reduce inequality and introduce savings dis-incentives. Using a heterogeneous agent model with incomplete markets, we show that higher taxes (and transfers) decrease consumption inequality but also mean savings and mean consumption. This demonstrates the trade-off between equity and efficiency. These theoretical predictions are tested by exploiting differences in tax rates across US states. Using two surveys, the Consumer Expenditure Survey and the Current Population Survey, we show that the empirical evidence supports the theory, and that there is a comparatively small fall in efficiency for a given gain in equity associated with higher taxation.

Suggested Citation

  • Charles GRANT & Christos KOULOVATIANOS & Alexander MICHAELIDES & Mario PADULA, 2003. "Redistributive Policies through Taxation: Theory and Evidence," Economics Working Papers ECO2003/13, European University Institute.
    • Handle: RePEc:eui:euiwps:eco2003/13
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.iue.it/PUB/ECO2003-13.pdf
    File Function: main text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Charles Grant & Winfried Koeniger, 2009. "Redistributive Taxation and Personal Bankruptcy in U.S. States," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 52(3), pages 445-467, August.
    2. Audrey Desbonnet & Jean-Olivier Hairault, 2010. "Inégalité de patrimoine et progressivité de l'impôt," Economie & Prévision, La Documentation Française, vol. 0(2), pages 21-41.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Undiversifiable earnings risk; tax distortions; equity; efficiency; transfers;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • H20 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - General
    • H31 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - Household

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:eui:euiwps:eco2003/13. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Cécile Brière (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deiueit.html .

    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.