In this article, I discuss the role a progressive income tax system and a redistributive pay as you go (PAYGO) social security system can play in insuring and reallocating idiosyncratic as well as aggregate risk. I also argue that the underlying source of market failures generating such a role...

How much additional tax revenue can the government generate by increasing the level of labor income taxes? In this paper we argue that the degree of tax progressivity is a quantitatively important determinant of the answer to this question. To make this point we develop a large scale overlapping...

This paper computes the optimal progressivity of the income tax code in a dynamic general equilibrium model with household heterogeneity in which uninsurable labor productivity risk gives rise to a nontrivial income and wealth distribution. A progressive tax system serves as a partial substitute...

Can public insurance through redistributive income taxation improve the allocation of risk in an economy in which private risk sharing is limited? The answer depends crucially on the fundamental friction that limits private risk sharing in the first place. If risk sharing is incomplete because...

In this paper we characterize quantitativelya the optimal mix of progressive income taxes and education subsidies in a model with endogeneous himan capital formation, borrowing constraints, income risk and incomplete financial markets. Progressive labor income taxes provide social insurance...