中文摘要
我们求解了等级相依社会福利函数的非线性所得税规划，利用基尼系数及相关的位置指数族来刻画规模与不平等之间的权衡。在不存在聚束的情况下，实际配置与最优配置中的等级是不变的。利用这一特征，我们为拟线性情形与可加情形提供了新的、简洁且直观的税收公式以及新的比较静态结果。我们的方法使最优税收的洞见更易为人们所理解。在我们的部分模拟中，美国实际税收政策接近于最优——唯独在最高收入端例外，该处的最优税率远高于实际水平。(JEL D31, D63, H21, H24, K34)
Abstract
We solve the nonlinear income tax program for rank-dependent social welfare functions, expressing the trade-off between size and inequality using the Gini and related families of positional indices. Absent bunching, ranks in the actual and optimal allocations are invariant. Exploiting this feature, we provide new, simple, and intuitive tax formulas for both the quasilinear and additive cases and new comparative static results. Our approach makes insights from optimal taxation more widely accessible. In some of our simulations the actual US tax policy is close to being optimal—except at the top, where optimal rates are much higher than in actuality. (JEL D31, D63, H21, H24, K34)