Debt Neutrality, Professor Vickrey and Henry George's "Single Tax"

11 Pages Posted: 5 Jan 2007 Last revised: 26 Oct 2022

See all articles by Willem H. Buiter

Willem H. Buiter

Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR); CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute); Columbia University; Independent Economic Adviser; Independent

Date Written: August 1988

Abstract

In the overlapping generations model with uncertain lifetimes, efficient life insurance markets and no operative intergenerational gift and bequest motive, a positive birth rate has been shown to be sufficient and necessary for absence of debt neutrality: equilibrium prices and quantities are independent of the mix of government borrowing and lump-sum taxation, holding constant the path of exhaustive public spending. Implicit in this analysis has been the assumption that the lump-sum tax is a tax on the income from human capital. Postponing lump-sum taxes then makes it possible to shift (part of) the tax burden to future generations if the birth rate is positive. If instead the tax falls on the income from a non-human fixed factor (land) whose ownership claims are priced efficiently, then, if all land is owned by generations currently alive, changes in the intertemporal pattern of taxation do not permit current generations to shift the tax burden to future generations. Taxes on the income from all "fully owned non-human-factors have this property, even those factors supplied elastically, but the latter will of course be subject to the familiar incentive or allocative effects of changes in (non-lump-sume) taxation.

Suggested Citation

Buiter, Willem H., Debt Neutrality, Professor Vickrey and Henry George's "Single Tax" (August 1988). NBER Working Paper No. w2673, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=439594

Willem H. Buiter (Contact Author)

Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

London
United Kingdom

CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute)

Poschinger Str. 5
Munich, DE-81679
Germany

HOME PAGE: http://www.CESifo.de

Columbia University ( email )

420 West 118th Street
New York, NY
United States

Independent Economic Adviser ( email )

Independent ( email )

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
36
Abstract Views
481
PlumX Metrics