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Nonseparable Preferences and Optimal Social Security Systems

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  • Borys Grochulski
  • Narayana Kocherlakota

Abstract

In this paper, we consider economies in which agents are privately informed about their skills, which are evolving stochastically over time. We require agents' preferences to be weakly separable between the lifetime paths of consumption and labor. However, we allow for intertemporal nonseparabilities in preferences like habit formation. We show that such nonseparabilities imply that optimal asset income taxes are necessarily retrospective in nature. We show that under weak conditions, it is possible to implement a socially optimal allocation using a social security system in which taxes on wealth are linear, and taxes/transfers are history-dependent only at retirement. The average asset income tax in this system is zero.

Suggested Citation

  • Borys Grochulski & Narayana Kocherlakota, 2007. "Nonseparable Preferences and Optimal Social Security Systems," NBER Working Papers 13362, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:13362
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    1. Daron Acemoglu & Kenneth Rogoff & Michael Woodford, 2009. "NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2008, Volume 23," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number acem08-1.
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    3. Narayana R. Kocherlakota, 2005. "Zero Expected Wealth Taxes: A Mirrlees Approach to Dynamic Optimal Taxation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 73(5), pages 1587-1621, September.
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    5. Grochulski, Borys & Piskorski, Tomasz, 2010. "Risky human capital and deferred capital income taxation," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 145(3), pages 908-943, May.
    6. Stefania Albanesi & Christopher Sleet, 2006. "Dynamic Optimal Taxation with Private Information," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 73(1), pages 1-30.
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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E60 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - General
    • H21 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Efficiency; Optimal Taxation

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