Jun-ichi Itaya

Optimal Emission Tax with Endogenous Location Choice of Duopolistic Firms

This paper explores optimal environmental tax policy under which duopoly firms strategically choose the location of their plants in a simple three-stage game. We examine how the relationship between the optimal emission tax and the choice of location of duopoly firms affects the welfare of the home country. We characterize the relationship between the optimal emission tax and the fixed cost, depending on the degree of environmental damage from production. Finally, we show the existence of asymmetric equilibrium in which either firm chooses relocation of its plant even if the duopoly firms are identical ex ante.

In praise of inequality: public good provision and income distribution

Abstract It is shown that if all individuals contribute towards the provision of a public good their utilities are equalised even if the income distribution is unequal. It may seem that there is then no role for redistributive policy, but it is proved that social welfare can be raised by creating sufficient income inequality that only the rich provide public goods.

A dynamic conjectural variations model in the private provision of public goods: a differential game approach

The purpose of this paper is to provide reasonable microfoundation to justify the concept of a conjectural valuations equilibrium which is often used in the literature on the private provision of public goods by incorporating an explicit dynamic process of learning with the help of the differential game. By interpreting the steady state conjectures in such a dynamic provision game as the conjectural variations variations in the corresponding static game, we derive zero or nonzero conjectural variations as an outcome of a learning process. Furthermore, we find that there may be uncountable conjectural variations and the possibility of matching behavior (i.e., positive conjectures), when nonlinear feedback strategies are available and when the domain of a state variable is appropriately restricted.

Technology, Preference Structure, and the Growth Effect of Money Supply

This paper studies the growth effect of money supply in the presence of increasing returns and endogenous labor supply. By using a simple model of endogenous growth with a cash-in-advance constraint, it is shown that the growth effect of money supply depends on the specifications of preference structures as well as on the production technology. Either if the production technology exhibits strong non-convexity or if the utility function has a high elasticity of intertemporal substitution, then there may exist dual balanced-growth equilibria and the impact of a change in money growth depends on which steady state is realized in the long run. It is also shown that there is no systematic relationship between the growth effect of money supply and local determinacy of the balanced growth path.

Tax incidence in a two-sector growing economy with perfect foresight: Long-run analysis

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to re-examine the long-run incidence of taxation. In so doing, we shall employ a two-sector perfect foresight equilibrium model with either a constant and variable discount rate. In the former a change in a personal income tax or any selective tax (e.g. a commodity, payroll, or profit tax) on the investment goods sector affects either the factor price or factor income ratio. All selective taxes on the consumption goods sector are neutral in the sense that they do not affect either ratio. In the latter only the commodity tax on the consumption goods is still neutral.

Money, Neutrality of Consumption Taxes, and Growth in Intertemporal Optimizing Models

This paper considers the effects of a proportional consumption tax with the same rate over time on the real growth path of a monetary economy. The analysis uses a variety of stylized monetary growth models in which individuals consumption-saving decision is based on intertemporal utility maximization, such as the money-in-utility, transaction-costs, and cash-in-advance models. The first key result is that the neutrality of the consumption tax may or may not be true, depending on the nature or the role of money in the respective models. The second is that the consumption tax is generally superior to the inflation tax (i.e., the monetary growth rate) in terms of steady state welfare when raising a given amount of revenue.

Taxation In The Two-Sector Neoclassical Growth Model With Sector-Specific Externalities And Endogenous Labour Supply

This paper examines the long-run impacts of selective (sector-specific) commodity, payroll and profit taxes in a two-sector endogenous growth model with sector-specific production externalities, in which one sector produces consumption goods and the other produces investment goods. The novelty of the model is that it allows not only for endogenous labor supply (which may lead to indeterminacy) but also for the intersectional allocation of labor. We analytically show that the long-run effects of these selective taxes are closely related to the possible emergence of the indeterminacy of equilibria, which may reverse the standard results of the growth effects of distortionary taxes.

The Public and Private Provision of Pure Public Goods and the Distortionary Effects of Income Taxation: A Political Economy Approach

A pure public good is provided by the government and the voluntary contributions of two types of households. The government finances its contribution by means of income taxation. The latter has distortionary effects. A third type of household never makes contributions. We analyse the effects of changes in the income tax rate on (a) the provision of the public good, (b) the private contributions of the households, and (c) changes in the distribution of income and welfare between contributing and non-contributing households. We derive a simple and testable condition under which the lowering of the income tax entails a Pareto improvement.

Implementing partial tax harmonization in an asymmetric tax competition game with repeated interaction

This paper investigates the conditions under which partial harmonization for capital taxation is sustained in a repeated interactions model of tax competition when there are three countries with heterogenous capital endowments. We show that regardless of the structure of the coalition (i.e. full or partial tax coordination), whether partial tax harmonization is sustainable or not crucially depends on the extent to which the capital endowment of the medium-sized country is similar to that of the large or small country. The most noteworthy finding is that the closer the capital endowment of the median country is to the average one, the less likely the tax harmonization including the median country is to prevail and the more likely the partial tax harmonization excluding the median country is to prevail. We also show that partial tax harmonization makes the member countries of the tax union better off and non-member countries worse off, which stands in shape contrast with previous studies such as Konrad and Schjelderup (1999) and Bucovetsky (2009).

An Evolutionary Game Model of Families’ Voluntary Provision of Public Goods

We consider a two-stage voluntary provision model where individuals in a family contribute to a pure public good and/or a household public good, and an altruistic parent makes a non-negative income transfer to his or her child. The subgame perfect equilibrium derived in the model is analyzed using two evolutionary dynamics games (i.e., replicator dynamics and best response dynamics). As a result, the equilibria with ex-post transfers and pre-committed transfers coexist, and are unstable in the settings of replicator dynamics as well as best response dynamics, whereas the monomorphic states (i.e., all families undertake either ex-post or pre-committed transfers) are stable. An income redistribution policy does not alter the real allocations in the settings of both evolutionary dynamics games, because the resulting real allocations depend on only the total income of society and not on the distribution of individual income.