Capital Tax Incidence: First Impressions from the Time Series

Aggregate time series data are used to calculate the incidence of capital taxes. Part of the analysis is borrowed from the literature on sales tax incidence, comparing pre-tax interest rates with tax rates. The other part compares tax rates with after-tax interest rates, which are measured separately and independently from pre-tax interest rates. I find a positive correlation between capital tax rates and pre-tax interest rates, and little correlation between after-tax interest rates and tax rates, but both of these findings seem to derive in part from the effect of the business cycle on tax rate measures, as opposed to a shifting of capital taxes. The empirical findings are consistent with significant capital tax shifting in the long run, little shifting in the short run, and clearly rule out over-shifting.

Robust Aggregate Implications of Stochastic Discount Factor Volatility

The stochastic discount factor seems volatile, but is this observation of any consequence for aggregate analysis of consumption, capital accumulation, output, etc.? I amend the standard frictionless model of aggregate consumption and capital accumulation with time-varying subjective probability adjustments, and obtain four implications for aggregate economic analysis. First, subjective probability adjustments add volatility to the stochastic discount factor, and can rationalize any pattern of asset prices satisfying no-arbitrage, even while capital accumulation is efficient. Second, despite its flexibility in pricing assets, the model implies that, in expected value, the intertemporal marginal rate of transformation is equal to the intertemporal marginal rate of substitution, and there is a simple, stable, and familiar relation between consumption growth and capital's return. Third, the expected returns on assets in small net aggregate supply are weakly (and sometimes negatively) correlated with capital's expected return, and are thereby poor predictors of aggregate consumption growth. Fourth, when it comes to assets in small net aggregate supply, capital gains reflect time varying risk premia, and returns can predict aggregate consumption growth better when the capital gain component of those returns is ignored. All four implications are consistent with empirical results reported here, and in the previous literature documenting stochastic discount factor volatility. Several recent theories of stochastic discount factor volatility can, from the aggregate point of view, be interpreted as special cases of subjective probability adjusted CCAPM.

A Dual Method of Empirically Evaluating Dynamic Competitive Equilibrium Models with Market Distortions, Applied to the Great Depression & World War II

I prove some theorems for competitive equilibria in the presence of market distortions, and use those theorems to motivate an algorithm for (simply and exactly) computing and empirically evaluating competitive equilibria for dynamic economies. Although a competitive equilibrium models interactions between all sectors, all consumer types, and all time periods, I show how my algorithm permits separate empirical evaluation of these pieces of the model and hence is practical even when very little data is available. I then compute a neoclassical growth model with distortionary taxes that fits aggregate U.S. time series for the period 1929-50 and conclude that, if it is to explain aggregate behavior during the period, government policy must have heavily taxed labor income during the Great Depression and lightly taxed it during the war. In other words, the challenge for the competitive equilibrium approach is not so much why output might change over time, but why the marginal product of labor and the marginal value of leisure diverged so much and why that wedge persisted so long. In this sense, explaining aggregate behavior during the period has been reduced to a public finance question -- were actual government policies distorting behavior in the same direction and magnitude as government policies in the model?

Capital Tax Incidence: Fisherian Impressions from the Time Series

This paper accepts for the sake of argument the hypothesis that much of the time series correlation between tax and profit rates is spurious, and shows how nonetheless time series for profit rates, tax rates, and consumption can be organized, compared and interpreted using Fisher's (1930) theory of consumption in order to understand the incidence of capital taxes. Capital taxation is associated with a wedge between anticipated aggregate consumption growth and capital rental rates, suggesting that in one way or another capital owner behavior adjusts in the direction needed for some passing' of the capital tax. Conversely, most of the medium and low frequency deviations between anticipated aggregate consumption growth and capital rental rates are associated with capital taxation, as implied by aggregate time-separable Fisherian consumption theories in which time preference, non-tax capital market distortions, aggregation biases, and other determinants of aggregate consumption growth vary little over time.

The Expanding Social Safety Net

Inflation-adjusted spending on means-tested subsidies have increased sharply since 2007, and most of this growth was due to changes in eligibility rules, and increases in subsidies per eligible person, rather than increases in the number of people who would have been eligible under pre-recession subsidy rules. The non-elderly parts of the safety net have increased from about $10,000 per year of non- or under-employment by non-elderly household heads and spouses in 2007 to almost$15,000 per year in 2010, adjusted for inflation. From 2007 to 2010, inflation-adjusted safety net spending increased $35,000 for every added year of non-employment or under-employment. As a result, the average private returns to employment are substantially less than they were in 2007.

What do Aggregate Consumption Euler Equations Say about the Capital Income Tax Burden?

Aggregate consumption Euler equations fit financial asset return data poorly. But they fit the return on the capital stock well, which leads us to three empirical findings relating to the capital income tax burden. First, capital taxation drives a wedge between consumption growth and the expected pre-tax capital return. Second, capital taxation is the major distortion in the capital market, in the sense that most of the medium and long run deviations between expected consumption growth and the expected pre-tax capital return are associated with capital taxation. Third, consumption growth appears to be pretty elastic to the after-tax capital return (i.e., capital is elastically supplied), even while it appears inelastic to returns on various financial assets. Capital income taxes are passed on through reduced capital accumulation, or higher markups, or some combination.

Microfoundations and macro implications of indivisible labor

I show that the “indivisible labor” models of Diamond and Mirrlees (1978, 1986), Hansen (1985), Rogerson (1988), Christiano and Eichenbaum (1992) and many others are, when aggregated across persons with the same marginal utility of income, equivalent to the divisible labor model of Lucas and Rapping (1969); any data on aggregate hours and earnings generated by the divisible (indivisible) model can be generated by some parameterization of the indivisible (divisible) model. The same is true when “macro” data are obtained by aggregating over time and across people. This equivalence means that the indivisibility of labor per se does not have implications for macroeconomics. Nor does indivisibility have “aggregate” normative implications.Hours of labor ; Labor supply

Can Monopoly Unionism Explain Publicly Induced Retirement?

It has long been suggested that trade unions take actions and favor public policies that reduce the quantity of labor so that union members might enjoy greater labor incomes. Can this explain the prevalence of generous public pension programs inducing retirement? I suggest not, by formalizing the monopoly unionism model and showing how labor's interest in reducing the quantity of labor cannot explain why the old are induced to retire rather than discouraging work among workers of all ages. Discouraging work of a subset of union workers introduces allocative inefficiencies without promoting the objectives of the monopoly union. And, unless the old have a disproportionate influence within the union, union interests cannot explain why public pension programs are so generous.

Selection, Investment, and Women's Relative Wages Since 1975

In theory, growing wage inequality within gender should cause women to invest more in their market productivity and should differentially pull able women into the workforce, thereby closing the measured gender gap even though women's wages might have grown less than men's had their behavior been held constant. Using the CPS repeated cross-sections between 1975 and 2001, we use control function (Heckit) methods to correct married women's conditional mean wages for selectivity and investment biases. Our estimates suggest that selection of women into the labor market has changed sign, from negative to positive, or at least that positive selectivity bias has come to overwhelm investment bias. The estimates also explain why measured women's relative wage growth coincided with growth of wage inequality within-gender, and attribute the measured gender wage gap closure to changing selectivity and investment biases, rather than relative increases in women's earning potential. Using PSID waves 1975-93 to control for the changing female workforce with person-fixed effects, we also find little growth in women's mean log wages. Finally, we make a first attempt to gauge the relative importance of selection versus investment biases, by examining the family and cognitive backgrounds of members of the female workforce. PSID, NLS, and NLSY data sets show how the cross-section correlation between female employment and family/cognitive background has changed from "negative" to "positive" over the last thirty years, in amounts that might be large enough to attribute most of women's relative wage growth to changing selectivity bias.

Population and Regulation

We present a model of efficient regulation along the lines of Demsetz (1967). In this model, setting up and running regulatory institutions takes a fixed cost, and therefore jurisdictions with larger populations affected by a given regulation are more likely to have them. Consistent with the model, we find that higher population U.S. states have more pages of legislation and adopt particular laws earlier in their history. We also find that specific types of regulation, including the regulation of entry, the regulation of labor, and the military draft are more extensive in countries with larger populations. Overall, the data show that population is an empirically important determinant of regulation.