A Note on Income Distribution and Growth

Many analysts expect the aging population to lead to a reduction in the growth of living standards. Income inequality – a problem that has been accentuated by the payroll tax hikes that were necessary to fund the public pension as the population ages – is becoming an increasing challenge at the same time. As a result, policy-makers need to pursue initiatives that can simultaneously address both our efficiency and our equity objectives. With the challenge of the aging population, it is all the more important that we not rely on fiscal policies that involve a trade-off between growth and equality. This paper identifies a strategy for tax policy that meets these objectives.fiscal policy, endogenous growth, efficiency and equity

A Note on Income Distribution and Growth

Many analysts expect the aging population to lead to a reduction in the growth of living standards. Income inequality – a problem that has been accentuated by the payroll tax hikes that were necessary to fund the public pension as the population ages – is becoming an increasing challenge at the same time. As a result, policy-makers need to pursue initiatives that can simultaneously address both our efficiency and our equity objectives. With the challenge of the aging population, it is all the more important that we not rely on fiscal policies that involve a trade-off between growth and equality. This paper identifies a strategy for tax policy that meets these objectives.fiscal policy, endogenous growth, efficiency and equity

Is Foreign-Owned Capital a Bad Thing to Tax?

The aging population has raised at least two concerns about tax policy. First, taxes will need to be increased to cover higher public-pension and medical-care expenses when baby boomers have retired. Second, taxes can be cut in the meantime, as the government realizes the "fiscal dividend" that accompanies its debt reduction program (that has been motivated by the aging population development). This paper uses a simple endogenous growth analysis to examine these issues. It is assumed that sales tax increases are infeasible on political grounds. Two conclusions emerge: the income tax rate levied on domestic residents should be cut during the debt-reduction period, and the tax rate on foreigners whose capital is operating in Canada should be increased later on when the bulk of the baby boomers have retired.fiscal policy, endogenous growth, open economy

Alternatives for Raising Living Standards

Given the fundamental goal of raising living standards in the longer term, much attention is paid to policies that can be expected to increase national saving. With respect to private saving, the mechanism is tax reform - a lower tax on interest income. The basic problem with this approach is that, for a given size of government, some other tax or transfer must be adjusted to finance the interest-tax cut. This fact may make it difficult to ensure that those with only labour income will share in the spoils. An alternative is to concentrate on public saving. Ultimately, deficit reduction makes possible lower taxes and/or higher transfer payments across the board. This reasoning suggests that debt reduction may be the more equitable government initiative. But there are other options such as investing in human capital and altering the population growth rate through immigration policy. The latter option is pursued in this paper. According to the standard neoclassical growth model, a lower population growth rate raises steady-state living standards, but things are more complicated in an optimization-based overlapping-generations context. This paper extends Blanchard's constant-planning-horizon model of disjoint agents to allow for retirement, a subset of the population that remains liquidity constrained, and various taxes and transfers - in a small open-economy setting. Tax reform, debt reduction and population growth policies are compared in an internally consistent manner. For each policy, both the immediate and steady-state effects are derived, and the present value of the entire time path for consumption between these two end-points is also analyzed (for all three policy initiatives). A calibrated version of the model is used to identify policy combinations that can deliver long-term gain without short-term pain, and without problems for the hand- to- mouth subset of the population.living standards; tax reform; debt reduction; population growth

Alternatives for Raising Living Standards.

Given the fundamental goal of raising living standards in the longer term, much attention is paid to policies that can be expected to increase national saving. With respect to private saving, the mechanism is tax reform – a lower tax on interest income. The basic problem with this approach is that, for a given size of government, some other tax or transfer must be adjusted to finance the interest-tax cut. This fact may make it difficult to ensure that those with only labour income will share in the spoils. An alternative is to concentrate on public saving. Ultimately, deficit reduction makes possible lower taxes and/or higher transfer payments across the board. This reasoning suggests that debt reduction may be the more equitable government initiative. But there are other options such as investing in human capital and altering the population growth rate through immigration policy. The latter option is pursued in this paper. According to the standard neoclassical growth model, a lower population growth rate raises steady-state living standards, but things are more complicated in an optimization-based overlapping-generations context. This paper extends Blanchard’s constantplanning- horizon model of disjoint agents to allow for retirement, a subset of the population that remains liquidity constrained, and various taxes and transfers – in a small open-economy setting. Tax reform, debt reduction and population growth policies are compared in an internally consistent manner. For each policy, both the immediate and steady-state effects are derived, and the present value of the entire time path for consumption between these two end-points is also analyzed (for all three policy initiatives). A calibrated version of the model is used to identify policy combinations that can deliver long-term gain without short-term pain, and without problems for the hand-to-mouth subset of the population.

Alternatives for Raising Living Standards

Given the fundamental goal of raising living standards in the longer term, much attention is paid to policies that can be expected to increase national saving. With respect to private saving, the mechanism is tax reform - a lower tax on interest income. The basic problem with this approach is that, for a given size of government, some other tax or transfer must be adjusted to finance the interest-tax cut. This fact may make it difficult to ensure that those with only labour income will share in the spoils. An alternative is to concentrate on public saving. Ultimately, deficit reduction makes possible lower taxes and/or higher transfer payments across the board. This reasoning suggests that debt reduction may be the more equitable government initiative. But there are other options such as investing in human capital and altering the population growth rate through immigration policy. The latter option is pursued in this paper. According to the standard neoclassical growth model, a lower population growth rate raises steady-state living standards, but things are more complicated in an optimization-based overlapping-generations context. This paper extends Blanchard's constant-planning-horizon model of disjoint agents to allow for retirement, a subset of the population that remains liquidity constrained, and various taxes and transfers - in a small open-economy setting. Tax reform, debt reduction and population growth policies are compared in an internally consistent manner. For each policy, both the immediate and steady-state effects are derived, and the present value of the entire time path for consumption between these two end-points is also analyzed (for all three policy initiatives). A calibrated version of the model is used to identify policy combinations that can deliver long-term gain without short-term pain, and without problems for the hand- to- mouth subset of the population.living standards; tax reform; debt reduction; population growth

Population Aging, Productivity, and Growth in Living Standards

Population aging creates both a problem (higher taxes on a small group of workers to finance higher public pension and health care costs) and automatic adjustments that help to address that problem. The prospect of longer retirement involves an increased incentive to invest in physical capital, and labour scarcity leads to higher pre-tax wages and an increased incentive to invest in human capital. Thus, productivity growth can be favourably affected by aging. The likely empirical magnitude of this beneficial effect is assessed in this paper.productivity; population aging

Is Foreign-Owned Capital a Bad Thing to Tax?

The aging population has raised at least two concerns about tax policy. First, taxes will need to be increased to cover higher public-pension and medical-care expenses when baby boomers have retired. Second, taxes can be cut in the meantime, as the government realizes the "fiscal dividend" that accompanies its debt reduction program (that has been motivated by the aging population development). This paper uses a simple endogenous growth analysis to examine these issues. It is assumed that sales tax increases are infeasible on political grounds. Two conclusions emerge: the income tax rate levied on domestic residents should be cut during the debt-reduction period, and the tax rate on foreigners whose capital is operating in Canada should be increased later on when the bulk of the baby boomers have retired.fiscal policy, endogenous growth, open economy

Some Macroeconomic Consequences of Basic Income and Employment Subsidies

Two macro models – one for a closed economy and the other for a small open economy – are used to examine the scope for income redistribution and employment creation. In particular, the introduction of both a guaranteed annual income (basic income) and an employment subsidy are examined, and these policies are compared to a straightforward tax cut for (unskilled) labour. All initiatives are financed by a tax on capital. In the open-economy setting, capital is perfectly mobile, so there is a trade-off between the direct benefits of each policy, and the costs that follow from the out-migration of capital. The model is used to assess the relative importance of these competing effects.guaranteed annual income, subsidies, capital taxes, redistribution.

Work-Sharing: an Efficiency-Wage Analysis

This paper evaluates two approaches to work-sharing by examining both within the same macro model. The standard approach involves imposing a quantity constraint on labour market participants (a maximum number of standard hours for each worker). This approach is compared to a revenue-neutral employment subsidy financed by a tax on overtime hours ? an initiative intended to harness market incentives. The paper shows that the second approach brings much preferred results ? it involves lower unemployment, higher investment, and no reduction in the wage earnings of those already employed. The analysis suggests that policymakers should not reject work-sharing just because they are (justifiably) skeptical of mandated reductions in hours. The model involves the following features: (i) it is optimization-based (so there is a well-defined reason for labour market failure); (ii) it facilitates the investigation of trade-offs (so it can be determined whether improvements in unemployment must be accompanied by reductions in productivity, investment, average hours or wage rates); (iii) it involves a small open economy (so concerns about the limits to independent policy in this setting are respected); and (iv) it can be readily calibrated (so empirically relevant quantitative results are derived).