Optimal Taxation in a Limited Commitment Economy
研究了当私人保险市场因有限承诺而不完美时，政府如何通过资本和劳动税来改善风险分担并筹集收入，发现资本税仅用于消除负外部性，而劳动税则主要满足长期预算需求。
This article studies optimal Ramsey taxation when risk sharing in private insurance markets is imperfect due to limited enforcement. In a limited commitment economy, there are externalities associated with capital and labour because individuals do not take into account that their labour and saving decisions affect aggregate labour and capital supply and wages, and thus the value of autarky. Therefore, a Ramsey government has an additional goal, which is to internalize these externalities of labour and capital to improve risk sharing, in addition to its usual goal—minimizing distortions in financing government expenditures. These two goals drive capital and labour taxes in opposite directions. It is shown that the steady-state optimal capital income taxes are levied only to remove the negative externality of the capital, whereas optimal labour income taxes are set to meet the budgetary needs of the government in the long run, despite the presence of positive externalities of labour.