Optimal Taxation with Rent-Seeking
研究了当个人可选择在传统部门或寻租部门工作时，社会规划者如何设计最优线性与非线性所得税，发现即使高收入者均为寻租者，最优边际税率仍可能保持适度。
Recent policy proposals have suggested taxing top incomes at very high rates on the grounds that some or all of the highest wage earners are engaged in socially unpro- ductive or counterproductive activities, such as externality imposing speculation in the financial sector. To address this, we provide a model in which agents can choose between working in a traditional sector, where private and social products coincide, and a crowdable rent-seeking sector, where some or all of earned income reflects the capture of pre-existing output rather than increased production. We character- ize Pareto optimal linear and non-linear income tax systems under the assumption that the social planner cannot or does not observe whether any given individual is a traditional worker or a rent-seeker. We find that optimal marginal taxes on the high- est wage earners can remain modest even if all high earners are socially unproductive rent-seekers and the government has a strong intrinsic desire for progressive redis- tribution. Intuitively, taxing their effort at a lower rate stimulates their rent-seeking efforts, thereby keeping private returns for other potential rent-seekers low and dis- couraging further entry.