Optimal Ramsey taxation with endogenous risk aversion

Abstract

In this paper, we study optimal Ramsey taxation under endogenous risk aversion formulation in an otherwise standard real business cycle economy. We show that when the risk aversion coefficient co-moves counter-cyclically, the canonical Chamley-Judd (Chamley, 1986; Judd, 1985) result does not hold true, and the Ramsey planner chooses a positive capital income tax rate in the long run. We report that result is due to additional wedges both in the intratemporal and the intertemporal optimality condition of the representative household. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.