Can Labor Market Imperfections Cause Overprovision of Public Inputs

Abstract

This paper concerns provision of productive public inputs in the presence of unemployment. It is shown that if the government is able to implement optimal taxes on labor income and profit income, respectively, then the public input will be underprovided. On the other hand, if the government is not able to implement an optimal tax on labor income, e.g. because the labor income tax is determined at another level in the public sector (e.g. the municipal or the state level), then overprovision may occur. We derive an equation which links overprovision of the public input to (i) the employment rate and to (ii) the deviation of the actual labor income tax from the optimal level.