现代经济学系列讲座第484期：Progressive Taxation and Macroeconomic (In)stability

题目：Progressive Taxation and Macroeconomic (In)stability

主讲人：Jangting Guo

University of California, Riverside

时间：2017年2月28日（周二）13:30-15:00

地点：复旦大学经济学院710会议室

Abstract:It has been shown that in an otherwise standard one-sector laissez-faire real business cycle model with an indeterminate steady state under useless government spending and no persistent output growth, sufficiently progressive income taxation may stabilize the economy against aggregate fluctuations caused by agents' animal spirits. We show that this previous finding can be overturned within an identical model which allows for productive/utility-generating public expenditures and/or sustained endogenous growth. This instability result implies that in sharp contrast to a conventional automatic stabilizer, progressive income taxation may destabilize a macroeconomy by generating business cycles driven by agents' self-fulfilling expectations or sunspots.