High Marginal Tax Rates on the Top 1 Percent? Lessons from a Life-Cycle Model with Idiosyncratic Income Risk
通过构建一个包含不可保劳动收入风险的生命周期模型，论证了对高收入者征收高边际劳动所得税（最优边际税率可达79%）是一种有效的社会保险工具，即使家庭具有高劳动供给弹性并做出动态储蓄决策。
This paper argues that high marginal labor income tax rates on top earners are an effective tool for social insurance even when households have high labor supply elasticity, households make dynamic savings decisions, and policies have general equilibrium effects. We construct a large-scale overlapping generations model with uninsurable labor productivity risk, show that it has a realistic wealth distribution, and numerically characterize the optimal top marginal rate. We find that marginal tax rates for top 1 percent earners of 79 percent are optimal as long as the model earnings and wealth distributions display a degree of concentration as observed in US data.