Paternalism against Veblen: Optimal Taxation and Non-respected Preferences for Social Comparisons
比较了福利主义与家长主义政府的最优非线性所得税政策，发现两者在边际税率规则上往往非常相似，数值模拟也显示税收水平和再分配程度接近。
This paper compares optimal nonlinear income tax policies of welfarist and paternalist governments, where the latter does not respect individual preferences regarding relative consumption. Consistent with previous findings, relative consumption concerns typically induce a welfarist government to increase the marginal tax rates to internalize positional externalities. Remarkably, the optimal marginal tax rules are often very similar in the paternalist case, where such externalities are not taken into account. We identify several cases where the marginal tax rules are indeed identical between the governments. Numerical simulations show that marginal and average tax levels and the overall redistribution are often also similar.