Optimal Taxation of Capital Income with Heterogeneous Rates of Return (with Aart Gerritsen, Bas Jacobs and Kevin Spiritus, forthcoming in Economic Journal)
We derive the Pareto-efficient mix of non-linear taxes on labour income and capital income if people differ in their rates of return on capital. We allow for two reasons why rates of return differ: because individuals with higher ability are better able to invest their capital or because wealthier individuals enjoy scale effects in wealth accumulation. In both cases, a strictly positive tax on capital income is part of any Pareto-efficient tax system. We derive a condition for the Pareto-efficient tax mix that relies solely on empirical sufficient statistics—not on social welfare weights—and find that Pareto-efficient taxes on capital income increase with the degree of return heterogeneity. Numerical simulations for empirically plausible return heterogeneity suggest that Pareto-efficient marginal tax rates on capital income are positive and substantial.
Green Innovation Policies: a Literature and Policy Review (with Esther Mot and Arjan Trinks, report written for the CPB Netherlands)
This report examines how governments can promote green innovation. It shows that two types of arguments play a role in thinking about green innovation policy: market failures and missions. Governments can stimulate green innovations with a targeted innovation policy. It also helps to price damage to the climate and the environment. The study also considers green innovation policy in the Netherlands, a country that spends substantial amounts to promote innovation in general and to foster the adoption of existing green technologies. However, instruments to specifically stimulate the development of new green technologies are modest.
Romania's Weak Fiscal State: What Explains It and What Can (Still) Be Done About It (with Cornel Ban, report written for the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Romania)
This study studies the causes for Romania's fiscal weakness and proposes legislative and administrative reforms that could remedy the situation .If the Romanian government could follow into the footsteps of Bulgaria and other new EU member states, it would avoid the near permanent fragility of its finances and be better situated to close the educational, health, social and infrastructural gaps that separate Romania from its regional peers society despite robust economic growth.
You Sponsor Mine, I Procure Yours: Pharmaceutical Sponsorships And Procurement in Public Hospitals (Job Market Paper)
Using unique data linking hospital procurement contracts with sponsorships from pharmaceutical firms, I investigate possible instances of influence peddling and conflict of interest in Romanian hospitals. Procurement contracts related to sponsorships are 11% higher than procurement contracts not related to sponsorships. Sponsorships increase the probability of receiving a procurement contract by 5 percentage points. Sponsoring a doctor in hospital management has a slightly larger effect than sponsoring a regular doctor: the difference is economically significant only for direct contracts, which are the least transparent. Contracts linked to sponsorships are associated with shorter procurement times: being linked to a management sponsorship is associated with a decrease of 4 days in the time between announcement and signing, but there is no such association with sponsorships to regular doctors.
Why is the Long-Run Tax on Capital Income Zero? Reinterpreting the Chamley-Judd Result (with Bas Jacobs)
Why is it optimal not to tax capital income in the long run in Chamley (1986) and Judd (1985)? This paper demonstrates that the answer follows from standard intuitions from the optimal commodity-tax literature. We show that the steady state assumption is critical for the Chamley-Judd result: in the steady-state, Engel curves for consumption become linear in labor earnings and consumption demands become equally complementary to leisure over time. From the optimal tax literature, we conclude that consumption should be taxed uniformly, which means that the optimal capital income tax is zero. We show that the intuition that capital income should not be taxed because the consumption distortions become infinite only applies when restrictions are imposed on the utility function. These restrictions ensure that consumption demands are equally complementary to leisure in the long run, thereby confirming standard optimal-tax intuitions. We also demonstrate that the optimal capital-income tax is zero irrespective of whether factor prices are determined in partial or general equilibrium. This result contradicts the intuition that optimal taxes on capital income are zero because the entire burden of capital income taxes is shifted to labor through general-equilibrium effects on factor prices.
We derive the Pareto-efficient mix of non-linear taxes on labour income and capital income if people differ in their rates of return on capital. We allow for two reasons why rates of return differ: because individuals with higher ability are better able to invest their capital or because wealthier individuals enjoy scale effects in wealth accumulation. In both cases, a strictly positive tax on capital income is part of any Pareto-efficient tax system. We derive a condition for the Pareto-efficient tax mix that relies solely on empirical sufficient statistics—not on social welfare weights—and find that Pareto-efficient taxes on capital income increase with the degree of return heterogeneity. Numerical simulations for empirically plausible return heterogeneity suggest that Pareto-efficient marginal tax rates on capital income are positive and substantial.
Green Innovation Policies: a Literature and Policy Review (with Esther Mot and Arjan Trinks, report written for the CPB Netherlands)
This report examines how governments can promote green innovation. It shows that two types of arguments play a role in thinking about green innovation policy: market failures and missions. Governments can stimulate green innovations with a targeted innovation policy. It also helps to price damage to the climate and the environment. The study also considers green innovation policy in the Netherlands, a country that spends substantial amounts to promote innovation in general and to foster the adoption of existing green technologies. However, instruments to specifically stimulate the development of new green technologies are modest.
Romania's Weak Fiscal State: What Explains It and What Can (Still) Be Done About It (with Cornel Ban, report written for the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Romania)
This study studies the causes for Romania's fiscal weakness and proposes legislative and administrative reforms that could remedy the situation .If the Romanian government could follow into the footsteps of Bulgaria and other new EU member states, it would avoid the near permanent fragility of its finances and be better situated to close the educational, health, social and infrastructural gaps that separate Romania from its regional peers society despite robust economic growth.
You Sponsor Mine, I Procure Yours: Pharmaceutical Sponsorships And Procurement in Public Hospitals (Job Market Paper)
Using unique data linking hospital procurement contracts with sponsorships from pharmaceutical firms, I investigate possible instances of influence peddling and conflict of interest in Romanian hospitals. Procurement contracts related to sponsorships are 11% higher than procurement contracts not related to sponsorships. Sponsorships increase the probability of receiving a procurement contract by 5 percentage points. Sponsoring a doctor in hospital management has a slightly larger effect than sponsoring a regular doctor: the difference is economically significant only for direct contracts, which are the least transparent. Contracts linked to sponsorships are associated with shorter procurement times: being linked to a management sponsorship is associated with a decrease of 4 days in the time between announcement and signing, but there is no such association with sponsorships to regular doctors.
Why is the Long-Run Tax on Capital Income Zero? Reinterpreting the Chamley-Judd Result (with Bas Jacobs)
Why is it optimal not to tax capital income in the long run in Chamley (1986) and Judd (1985)? This paper demonstrates that the answer follows from standard intuitions from the optimal commodity-tax literature. We show that the steady state assumption is critical for the Chamley-Judd result: in the steady-state, Engel curves for consumption become linear in labor earnings and consumption demands become equally complementary to leisure over time. From the optimal tax literature, we conclude that consumption should be taxed uniformly, which means that the optimal capital income tax is zero. We show that the intuition that capital income should not be taxed because the consumption distortions become infinite only applies when restrictions are imposed on the utility function. These restrictions ensure that consumption demands are equally complementary to leisure in the long run, thereby confirming standard optimal-tax intuitions. We also demonstrate that the optimal capital-income tax is zero irrespective of whether factor prices are determined in partial or general equilibrium. This result contradicts the intuition that optimal taxes on capital income are zero because the entire burden of capital income taxes is shifted to labor through general-equilibrium effects on factor prices.