Nonseparable preferences and optimal social security systems

A-Tier
Journal: Journal of Economic Theory
Year: 2010
Volume: 145
Issue: 6
Pages: 2055-2077

Score contribution per author:

2.011 = (α=2.01 / 2 authors) × 2.0x A-tier

α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count

Abstract

In this paper, we consider economies in which agents are privately informed about their skills, which evolve stochastically over time. We require agents' preferences to be weakly separable between the lifetime paths of consumption and labor. However, we allow for intertemporal nonseparabilities in preferences like habit formation. In this environment, we derive a generalized version of the Inverse Euler Equation and use it to show that intertemporal wedges characterizing optimal allocations of consumption can be strictly negative. We also show that preference nonseparabilities imply that optimal differentiable asset income taxes are necessarily retrospective in nature. We show that under weak conditions, it is possible to implement a socially optimal allocation using a social security system in which taxes on wealth are linear, and taxes/transfers are history-dependent only at retirement. The average asset income tax in this system is zero.

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:eee:jetheo:v:145:y:2010:i:6:p:2055-2077
Journal Field
Theory
Author Count
2
Added to Database
2026-01-25