Journal of the European Economic Association · 2025 · [{"name": "Lukas Mayr", "affiliation": ["University of Essex"]}]
中文摘要
摘要：在一般宏观经济环境下，我以可估计的充分统计量推导资本税变化的福利效应。生产中较低的资本—劳动替代性不仅会使工资和金融回报的响应更为强烈，还会降低资本税上调所带来的无谓损失。因此，与传统观点相反，恰恰是在“涓滴”效应更强之时，最优资本税可能更高。我将理论结果应用于美国数据，并用近期证据对与福利相关的统计量加以约束。尽管提高资本税会压低工资，但当边际收入以一次性、均等的方式进行再分配时，美国收入分布中处于底部三分之二的人群仍将从资本税率的提高中获益。我将所识别的与福利相关的统计量用作模型参数化版本中的校准目标，并通过数值方法求解最优线性资本税与累进劳动税。标准福利准则表明，相较于现状，资本税应当更高，劳动税也应更高但累进性更弱。
Abstract
Abstract Within a general macroeconomic environment, I derive the welfare effect of capital tax changes in terms of estimable sufficient statistics. Lower capital–labor substitutability in production not only induces a stronger responsiveness of wages and financial returns, but it also reduces the deadweight loss of capital tax hikes. Thus, contrary to conventional wisdom, optimal capital taxes may be higher precisely when “trickle down” effects are stronger. I apply my theoretical results to US data and discipline the welfare-relevant statistics with recent evidence. Despite its depressing effect on wages, the bottom two-thirds of the US income distribution would gain from an increase in the capital tax rate when marginal revenue is redistributed lump-sum and equally. I utilize the identified welfare-relevant statistics as calibration targets in a parametric version of the model and solve numerically for optimal linear capital- and progressive labor taxes. Standard welfare criteria warrant higher capital taxes as well as higher, but less progressive, labor taxes than the status quo.