The Surprising Power of Age-Dependent Taxes

Matthew C. Weinzierl

Article | Review of Economic Studies | October 2011

The Surprising Power of Age-Dependent Taxes

Abstract

This article provides a new, empirically driven application of the dynamic Mirrleesian framework by studying a feasible and potentially powerful tax reform: age-dependent labor income taxation. I show analytically how age dependence improves policy on both the intratemporal and intertemporal margins. I use detailed numerical simulations, calibrated with data from the U.S. PSID, to generate robust policy implications: age dependence (1) lowers marginal taxes on average and especially on high-income young workers and (2) lowers average taxes on all young workers relative to older workers when private saving and borrowing are restricted. Finally, I calculate and characterize the welfare gains from age dependence. Despite its simplicity, age dependence generates a welfare gain equal to between 0.6% and 1.5% of aggregate annual consumption, and it captures more than 60% of the gain from reform to the dynamic optimal policy. The gains are due to substantial increases in both efficiency and equity. When age dependence is restricted to be Pareto-improving, the welfare gain is nearly as large.

Keywords: Taxation; Policy; Age; Income; Mathematical Methods; Welfare or Wellbeing; United States;

Format: Print

29 pages

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Citation:

Weinzierl, Matthew C. "The Surprising Power of Age-Dependent Taxes." Review of Economic Studies 78, no. 4 (October 2011): 1490–1518. (Also Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 11-114, May 2011.)

Case | HBS Case Collection | April 2020 (Revised June 2020)

SpaceX, Economies of Scale, and a Revolution in Space Access

Matthew C. Weinzierl, Kylie Lucas and Mehak Sarang

From the time he transformed the world of online banking, Elon Musk established himself as a bold innovator. After selling X.com to PayPal in 2002, he founded a series of revolutionary start-ups, starting with Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX). Hoping to "make human life multiplanetary", Musk aimed to establish the first Mars civilization, but was unable to procure rockets that would be cheap or reliable enough to make the journey. Over the course of the next decade, SpaceX developed a line of revolutionary rockets that transformed the commercial space launch industry. Using reusable rockets to exploit the benefits of economies of scale, SpaceX cut costs to orbit by a factor of 18 and captured a large percentage of the global launch market, once thought to be inaccessible to newcomers in the industry. But after a remarkable decade, Musk's original goal to reach Mars seemed both within reach and impossibly optimistic. SpaceX developed technologies that would be critical in supporting a crewed mission to Mars, but the cost to get there was estimated to be well above $200 billion dollars in 2014, nowhere near revenues from the launch services market. Would there be enough demand for launch services to make Elon Musk's vision a possibility, or would SpaceX have to find other ways to get there?

Keywords: space tech; space access; vision; Economies of Scale; Technological Innovation; Emerging Markets; Commercialization; Finance; Aerospace Industry;

Citation:

Weinzierl, Matthew C., Kylie Lucas, and Mehak Sarang. "SpaceX, Economies of Scale, and a Revolution in Space Access." Harvard Business School Case 720-027, April 2020. (Revised June 2020.) View Details

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Taxing corporations is popular, but why? Corporations do not bear the burden of taxes, people do, and the incidence of the corporate income tax burden is likely to be far different from what many of its supporters assume.
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The Surprising Power of Age-Dependent Taxes

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