IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/sce/scecf4/10.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Markovian Optimal Taxation

Author

Listed:
  • Salvador Ortigueira

Abstract

In this paper we study optimal taxation in a dynamic game played by a sequence of governments, one for each time period, and a private sector composed of a continuum of households. We focus on the Markov-Perfect equilibrium of this game under two assumptions on the extent of government's intra-period commitment, which in turn define two notions of time consistency of the Markov-Perfect policy. Our results show that the extent of government's intra-period commitment has important quantitative implications for policies, welfare, and macroeconomic variables, and consequently that it must be explicitly stated as one of the givens of the economy, alongside preferences, markets and technology. We see this as an important result, since most of the previous literature on Markovian optimal taxation has assumed, either interchangeably or unnoticeably, different degrees of government's intra-period commitment.

Suggested Citation

  • Salvador Ortigueira, 2004. "Markovian Optimal Taxation," Computing in Economics and Finance 2004 10, Society for Computational Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:sce:scecf4:10
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://repec.org/sce2004/up.11709.1075059561.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Per Krusell & Anthony A. Smith, Jr., 2003. "Consumption--Savings Decisions with Quasi--Geometric Discounting," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 71(1), pages 365-375, January.
    2. Kenneth L. Judd, 1998. "Numerical Methods in Economics," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262100711, April.
    3. Gerhard Sorger, 1997. "Markov-perfect Nash equilibria in a class of resource games," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 11(1), pages 79-100.
    4. Paul Klein & Per Krusell & José-Víctor Ríos-Rull, 2004. "Time-Consistent Public Expenditures," Levine's Bibliography 122247000000000652, UCLA Department of Economics.
    5. Christopher Phelan & Ennio Stacchetti, 2001. "Sequential Equilibria in a Ramsey Tax Model," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 69(6), pages 1491-1518, November.
    6. Daniel Cohen & Philippe Michel, 1988. "How Should Control Theory Be Used to Calculate a Time-Consistent Government Policy?," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 55(2), pages 263-274.
    7. Dmitry V. Vedenov & Mario J. Miranda, 2001. "Numerical solution of dynamic oligopoly games with capital investment," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 18(1), pages 237-261.
    8. Turnovsky, Stephen J. & Brock, William A., 1980. "Time consistency and optimal government policies in perfect foresight equilibrium," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 183-212, April.
    9. Judd, Kenneth L., 1992. "Projection methods for solving aggregate growth models," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 410-452, December.
    10. Kydland, Finn E & Prescott, Edward C, 1977. "Rules Rather Than Discretion: The Inconsistency of Optimal Plans," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 85(3), pages 473-491, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Zheng Song, 2011. "The Dynamics of Inequality and Social Security in General Equilibrium," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 14(4), pages 613-635, October.

    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. Salvador Ortigueira, 2006. "Markov-Perfect Optimal Taxation," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 9(1), pages 153-178, January.
    2. Martin, Fernando M., 2010. "Markov-perfect capital and labor taxes," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 503-521, March.
    3. Martin, Fernando M., 2015. "Policy And Welfare Effects Of Within-Period Commitment," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 19(7), pages 1401-1426, October.
    4. Anderson, Gary S. & Kim, Jinill & Yun, Tack, 2010. "Using a projection method to analyze inflation bias in a micro-founded model," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 34(9), pages 1572-1581, September.
    5. Dennis, Richard & Kirsanova, Tatiana, 2014. "Computing Markov-Perfect Optimal Policies in Business-Cycle Models," 2007 Annual Meeting, July 29-August 1, 2007, Portland, Oregon TN 2015-64, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    6. Catarina Reis, 2013. "Taxation without commitment," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 52(2), pages 565-588, March.
    7. Dennis, Richard & Kirsanova, Tatiana, 2016. "Computing Markov-Perfect Optimal Policies In Business-Cycle Models," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 20(7), pages 1850-1872, October.
    8. Wozny Lukasz & Growiec Jakub, 2012. "Intergenerational Interactions in Human Capital Accumulation," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 12(1), pages 1-47, June.
    9. Ambler, Steve & Pelgrin, Florian, 2010. "Time-consistent control in nonlinear models," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 34(10), pages 2215-2228, October.
    10. Marco Bassetto & Zhen Huo & José-Víctor Ríos-Rull, 2018. "Organizational Equilibrium with Capital," NBER Working Papers 25376, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Dennis, Richard & Kirsanova, Tatiana, 2010. "Expectations Traps and Coordination Failures: Selecting among Multiple Discretionary Equilibria," MPRA Paper 24616, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Azzimonti, Marina & Sarte, Pierre-Daniel & Soares, Jorge, 2009. "Distortionary taxes and public investment when government promises are not enforceable," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 33(9), pages 1662-1681, September.
    13. Levine, Paul & Pearlman, Joseph, 2011. "Computation of LQ Approximations to Optimal Policy Problems in Different Information Settings under Zero Lower Bound Constraints," Dynare Working Papers 10, CEPREMAP.
    14. Boháček, Radim & Kejak, Michal, 2018. "Optimal government policies in models with heterogeneous agents," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 176(C), pages 834-858.
    15. Davide Debortoli & Ricardo Nunes, 2007. "Loose commitment," International Finance Discussion Papers 916, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    16. Balbus, Łukasz & Reffett, Kevin & Woźny, Łukasz, 2012. "Stationary Markovian equilibrium in altruistic stochastic OLG models with limited commitment," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(2), pages 115-132.
    17. Paul Klein & Per Krusell & José-Víctor Ríos-Rull, 2004. "Time-Consistent Public Expenditures," Levine's Bibliography 122247000000000652, UCLA Department of Economics.
    18. Andreas Lanz & Gregor Reich & Ole Wilms, 2022. "Adaptive grids for the estimation of dynamic models," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 20(2), pages 179-238, June.
    19. Pelin Ilbas, 2006. "Optimal Monetary Policy rules for the Euro area in a DSGE framework," Working Papers of Department of Economics, Leuven ces0613, KU Leuven, Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB), Department of Economics, Leuven.
    20. Martin, Fernando M., 2015. "Debt, inflation and central bank independence," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 129-150.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Markov-Perfect Optimal Taxation; Time-Consistent policies; Instantaneous and Non-Instantaneous commitment; Numerical methods;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E61 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Policy Objectives; Policy Designs and Consistency; Policy Coordination
    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory

    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:sce:scecf4:10. 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: Christopher F. Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sceeeea.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.