Journal of Public Economic Theory最新文献

{"title":"Nonlinear Labor Income Taxation Under a Political Constraint","authors":"Darong Dai","doi":"10.1111/jpet.70144","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jpet.70144","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Rising political polarization raises a question for redistributive policy: How does a requirement to secure middle-class support reshape optimal nonlinear income taxation under sharply different social objectives? We model political feasibility as a participation constraint for the median skill type and compare maxi-min, maxi-max, and weighted-utilitarian tax design. The key innovation is to solve the resulting mechanism-design problem when the first-order approach fails, and the monotonicity constraint generates endogenous bunching around the median type. Tightening the political constraint reduces income inequality under both extreme objectives, but through opposite tax adjustments. Under maxi-min, marginal tax rates fall for low and middle incomes, and middle-class pre-tax income rises. Under maxi-max, marginal tax rates rise for middle and high incomes, and middle-class pre-tax income falls. Under stated regularity and sign conditions, weighted utilitarianism combines these responses: marginal tax rates fall below the bunching region and rise above it, so pre-tax income rises for low and bunched types and falls for high types. Thus, stronger outside options for the middle-class compress inequality, although their income gains depend critically on the policymaker's redistributive objective.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":47024,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economic Theory","volume":"28 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149205566","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Real Cost Channel and Optimal Labor Taxation at the Zero Lower Bound","authors":"Haoan Wang,&nbsp;Haochun Ma,&nbsp;He Nie","doi":"10.1111/jpet.70145","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jpet.70145","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>We study optimal labor income taxation at the zero lower bound in a New Keynesian model with a real cost channel (RCC). With costless state-contingent taxation, optimal inflation and output are invariant to the RCC. A unified wedge identity determines the tax correction that offsets the RCC, increasing the crisis tax hike and attenuating the recovery tax cut under fiscal forward guidance. We then introduce the cost of state-contingent tax revisions, under which the RCC can affect the optimal allocation by altering implementation costs. The difference between optimal taxes contains both the RCC correction and an allocation-adjustment term, with the latter vanishing in the costless benchmark.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47024,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economic Theory","volume":"28 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149205565","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Cesàro Average Criterion on Infinite Utility Streams and Its Extensions","authors":"Kensei Nakamura","doi":"10.1111/jpet.70143","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jpet.70143","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>When evaluating policies that affect future generations, the most commonly used criterion is the discounted utilitarian rule. However, in terms of intergenerational fairness, it is difficult to justify prioritizing the current generation over future generations. This paper axiomatically examines impartial utilitarian rules over infinite-dimensional utility streams. We provide simple characterizations of the social welfare ordering that evaluates utility streams by their long-run average on the domain where the average exists. Furthermore, we derive the necessary and sufficient conditions for the same axioms to hold in a more general domain, the set of bounded utility streams. Some of these results are closely related to the Banach limits, a well-known generalization of the classical limit concept for streams. Thus, this paper can be seen as proposing an appealing subclass of Banach limits through axiomatic analysis.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":47024,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economic Theory","volume":"28 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149146063","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Financial Frictions, Corporate-to-Consumption Tax Shifting, R&D-Driven Growth, and Welfare","authors":"Ken Tabata","doi":"10.1111/jpet.70142","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jpet.70142","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Does shifting the tax base from corporate income to consumption under a balanced-budget constraint improve welfare? From a purely efficiency perspective, we study this question in a Rivera-Batiz and Romer-type variety-expanding growth model with heterogeneous R&amp;D productivity and financial frictions that limit external finance for innovation. Taking the labor income tax rate as fixed, we characterize the welfare-maximizing corporate income and consumption tax rates and examine how they vary with financial development, modeled as a relaxation of borrowing constraints on R&amp;D and interpreted as an improvement in legal institutions. Our main contribution is to show how financial development affects the welfare implications of corporate-to-consumption tax shifting through entrepreneurial selection in R&amp;D. When financial frictions are severe, lower corporate taxation is less attractive because R&amp;D investment is inefficiently allocated. As frictions are relaxed, more productive entrepreneurs gain access to finance, improving the productivity composition of R&amp;D investment. Beyond a threshold level of financial development, lower corporate taxation—and, in some cases, a corporate-profit subsidy—becomes welfare enhancing, implying a greater reliance on consumption taxation. We also examine the robustness of these results under alternative assumptions regarding patent protection, productivity dispersion, intertemporal preferences, returns to specialization, government size, and the labor income tax rate.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":47024,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economic Theory","volume":"28 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149146900","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A Dynamic Model of Exchange Bequest and Eldercare","authors":"Simon Fan,&nbsp;Yu Pang","doi":"10.1111/jpet.70141","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jpet.70141","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>This paper develops an overlapping generations model with intrafamily bargaining to analyze the provision of informal eldercare by non-altruistic children. Parents strategically deploy wealth transfers—comprising their personal savings and inheritances received from their own parents—to incentivize informal care, with formal care serving as their credible outside option. Informal care plays a key role in preserving household financial resources that could otherwise be exhausted by the cost of formal care. We show that inherited wealth progressively dampens the incentive for new savings, propelling the economy toward a zero-savings steady state, whereas parental transfers and the resulting eldercare provision rise in tandem toward their steady-state levels. The decentralized equilibrium is inefficient during the transition path: individuals may underprovide eldercare under certain parameter configurations and save excessively. A government subsidy for formal care, which enhances the elderly's bargaining position, can correct the inefficiency associated with informal care and improve social welfare in the steady state.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":47024,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economic Theory","volume":"28 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149146503","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Carbon Taxation in a Second-Best Setting: Impacts of Sectoral Differences on Optimal Rates","authors":"Mehrab Kiarsi,&nbsp;Nahid Masoudi","doi":"10.1111/jpet.70140","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jpet.70140","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper investigates the Ramsey-optimal fiscal and environmental policy in an economy with two differentiated final-goods sectors: brown (pollutive) and green (zero emissions). This analysis provides new insights into the interaction between distortionary taxes and carbon taxes in both the short run and long run. Under assumptions of a homogeneous composite good and preferences that are both separable in consumption and leisure, and homogeneous in consumption, the Ramsey-optimal carbon tax aligns with the Pigouvian tax, fully internalizing the social cost of carbon (SCC). However, relaxing any of these assumptions leads to significantly different outcomes. Our findings highlight two key points: first, in our model, the gap between the Pigouvian and Ramsey-optimal carbon tax is driven not by climate utility damages but by the substitutability of differentiated final goods together with frictions in intersectoral labor mobility. Second, we show that the Ramsey-optimal carbon tax can be either higher or lower than the SCC in economies with differentiated final goods, when both goods are imperfectly substitutable and labor is imperfectly mobile across sectors, depending on consumer preferences over these goods. This result contrasts with prior literature, which generally suggests that in the absence of climate-related utility damages, the optimal carbon tax equals the SCC, while the presence of distortionary taxes causes the carbon tax to fall below the SCC when climate-related damages are present.</p>","PeriodicalId":47024,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economic Theory","volume":"28 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-09-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/jpet.70140","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148994382","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Parallel Imports and Competition With Multiple Manufacturers","authors":"Kuo-Feng Kao,&nbsp;Pei-Cyuan Shih","doi":"10.1111/jpet.70139","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jpet.70139","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>We use a two-country model to examine the effect of parallel imports (PIs) when there are multiple manufacturers. With one manufacturer, PIs intensify competition in the home market and lower the manufacturer's profit. However, with multiple manufacturers, PIs may raise both the manufacturer's profit and social welfare. Without PIs, manufacturers set the wholesale price below marginal cost to win market share in the foreign country, creating excessive competition abroad. Allowing PIs leads manufacturers to raise wholesale prices, mitigating home-market competition. Higher wholesale prices also reduce foreign market competition, increasing manufacturers' profits when trade costs or foreign market size are large. Finally, we show that allowing PIs may lead manufacturers to authorize retailers to serve both markets exclusively when the foreign market is large and trade costs are very low.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":47024,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economic Theory","volume":"28 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148942548","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Mandated Annuitization, Gender-Neutral Pricing, and the Possibility of Negative Correlation Between Risk Type and Purchase Level","authors":"Sau-Him Paul Lau,&nbsp;Yinan Ying,&nbsp;Qilin Zhang","doi":"10.1111/jpet.70136","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jpet.70136","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Mandated annuitization is often proposed to eliminate the inefficiency caused by the positive correlation between risk type and purchase level in insurance markets. We revisit this solution in a mandatory annuity program with partial waiver, which is empirically relevant. With the standard assumptions of positive health—wealth correlation as well as gender gaps in health and wealth, we obtain two main results. First, under gender-based pricing, the correlation of risk type and purchase level is still positive even though annuity purchases are mandatory. Second, based on decomposing the severity of distortion due to mandated annuitization under gender-neutral pricing into the within-group and between-group effects, it is shown that risk type and purchase level may be negatively correlated if the between-group effect is stronger than the within-group effect.</p>","PeriodicalId":47024,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economic Theory","volume":"28 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/jpet.70136","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148942433","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Competing for Priorities in School Choice","authors":"Greg Leo,&nbsp;Martin Van der Linden","doi":"10.1111/jpet.70137","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jpet.70137","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We present a model in which students can influence their priorities in a school choice mechanism through a first-stage contest. We show that efficiency improvements at the mechanism level can lead to net efficiency losses if they come at the price of increased allocative inequalities, intensifying competition in the contest. To demonstrate this potential tension, we apply these results to the deferred and immediate acceptance mechanisms (<span></span><math>\u0000 <semantics>\u0000 <mrow>\u0000 \u0000 <mrow>\u0000 <mi>DA</mi>\u0000 </mrow>\u0000 </mrow>\u0000 <annotation> $mathrm{DA}$</annotation>\u0000 </semantics></math> and <span></span><math>\u0000 <semantics>\u0000 <mrow>\u0000 \u0000 <mrow>\u0000 <mi>IA</mi>\u0000 </mrow>\u0000 </mrow>\u0000 <annotation> $mathrm{IA}$</annotation>\u0000 </semantics></math>) and show that there are conditions under which <span></span><math>\u0000 <semantics>\u0000 <mrow>\u0000 \u0000 <mrow>\u0000 <mi>IA</mi>\u0000 </mrow>\u0000 </mrow>\u0000 <annotation> $mathrm{IA}$</annotation>\u0000 </semantics></math> can yield higher net welfare than <span></span><math>\u0000 <semantics>\u0000 <mrow>\u0000 \u0000 <mrow>\u0000 <mi>DA</mi>\u0000 </mrow>\u0000 </mrow>\u0000 <annotation> $mathrm{DA}$</annotation>\u0000 </semantics></math>, despite the allocative efficiency advantages of <span></span><math>\u0000 <semantics>\u0000 <mrow>\u0000 \u0000 <mrow>\u0000 <mi>DA</mi>\u0000 </mrow>\u0000 </mrow>\u0000 <annotation> $mathrm{DA}$</annotation>\u0000 </semantics></math> under these conditions.</p>","PeriodicalId":47024,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economic Theory","volume":"28 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/jpet.70137","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148878415","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Family Bargaining and the Gender Gap in Informal Care","authors":"Chiara Canta,&nbsp;Helmuth Cremer","doi":"10.1111/jpet.70135","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jpet.70135","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>We study the optimal long-term care (LTC) policy when informal care can be provided by children in exchange for monetary transfers from their elderly parents. We consider a bargaining model with single-child families, where daughters have lower labor market wages, and bargaining power within the family varies by the child's gender. In the laissez-faire scenario, daughters always provide more informal care than sons. When their bargaining weight is smaller, they also experience lower welfare; however, this may be reversed if their bargaining weight is sufficiently high. The first-best outcome involves redistribution from families with sons to families with daughters and can be implemented through a gender-specific schedule of public LTC benefits and state-contingent transfers to adult children. Gender neutrality disadvantages families with daughters and may even leave daughters worse off than under laissez faire. It also leads to a distorted allocation of care within families with daughters and affects the distribution of transfers in all families.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":47024,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economic Theory","volume":"28 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-08-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148784911","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}