Essays in dynamic optimal taxation: working experience, unemployment scarring and poverty

This thesis investigates the design of optimal tax systems in dynamic environments. The first essay characterizes the optimal tax system where wages depend on stochastic shocks and work experience. In addition to redistributive and efficiency motives, the taxation of inexperienced workers depends on a second-best requirement that encourages work experience, a social insurance motive and incentive effects. Calibrations using U.S. data yield higher expected optimal marginal income tax rates for experienced workers for most of the inexperienced workers. They confirm that the average marginal income tax rate increases (decreases) with age when shocks and work experience are substitutes (complements). Finally, more variability in experienced workers' earnings prospects leads to increasing tax rates since income taxation acts as a social insurance mechanism. In the second essay, the properties of an optimal tax system are investigated in a dynamic private information economy where labor market frictions create unemployment that destroys workers' human capital. A two-skill type model is considered where wages and employment are endogenous. I find that the optimal tax system distorts the first-period wages of all workers below their efficient levels which leads to more employment. The standard no-distortion-at-the-top result no longer holds due to the combination of private information and the destruction of human capital. I show this result analytically under the Maximin social welfare function and confirm it numerically for a general social welfare function. I also investigate the use of a training program and job creation subsidies. The final essay analyzes the optimal linear tax system when there is a population of individuals whose perceptions of savings are linked to their disposable income and their family background through family cultural transmission. Aside from the standard equity/efficiency trade-off, taxes account for the endogeneity of perceptions through two channels. First, taxing labor decreases income, which decreases the perception of savings through time. Second, taxation on savings corrects for the misperceptions of workers and thus savings and labor decisions. Numerical simulations confirm that behavioral issues push labor income taxes upward to finance saving subsidies. Government transfers to individuals are also decreased to finance those same subsidies.

Philosophie, ihr Problem und ihre Probleme; einführung in den kritischen Idealismus,

Mode of access: Internet.

Philosophie du dix-huitième siècle;

Mode of access: Internet.

Ren pu.

Mode of access: Internet.

Philosophie positive; revue.

Mode of access: Internet.

Philosophie der Offenbarung : als Grundlage und Bedingung einer höhern Ausbildung der Theologie /

Includes bibliographical references.

Demophili, Democratis et Secundi veterum philosophorum sententiæ morales.

In Greek and Latin.

Philosophie des Geistes : oder Encyklopädie der gesammten Geisteslehre.

1. abth. Ontologische und psychologische betrachtung des geistes.--2. abth. Pragmatologie des geistes, philosophie der geschichte und speculative theologie.

Cursos de Lógica y Etica según la escuela de Edimburgo /

Bibliographical footnotes.

The sayings of Confucius,

Mode of access: Internet.

Philosophie foer olaerde : innehaallande laerorika betraktelser oefwer Gud, menniskan och naturen /

Mode of access: Internet.

“Behind a Best Seller: Kabbalah, Science, and Loving One’s Neighbor in Pinhas Hurwitz’s Sefer ha-Brit”

This manuscript is a literary history of The Book of Covenant, an encyclopedic work of science, philosophy, and ethics written in the late-eighteenth century by Jewish philosopher and polymath Pinhas Hurwitz. Ruderman explores the reasons for the book's huge popularity--it has been republished in forty editions in the last century--as well as its lasting influence on Jewish and kabbalistic thought, and its important place in Jewish society's confrontation with modernity.

“Behind a Best Seller: Kabbalah, Science, and Loving One’s Neighbor in Pinhas Hurwitz’s Sefer ha-Brit”

This manuscript is a literary history of The Book of Covenant, an encyclopedic work of science, philosophy, and ethics written in the late-eighteenth century by Jewish philosopher and polymath Pinhas Hurwitz. Ruderman explores the reasons for the book's huge popularity--it has been republished in forty editions in the last century--as well as its lasting influence on Jewish and kabbalistic thought, and its important place in Jewish society's confrontation with modernity.

Optimal Control of Heterogeneous Systems

Цветомир Цачев - В настоящия доклад се прави преглед на някои резултати от областта на оптималното управление на непрекъснатите хетерогенни системи, публикувани в периодичната научна литература в последните години. Една динамична система се нарича хетерогенна, ако всеки от нейните елементи има собствена динамиката. Тук разглеждаме оптимално управление на системи, чиято хетерогенност се описва с едномерен или двумерен параметър – на всяка стойност на параметъра отговаря съответен елемент на системата. Хетерогенните динамични системи се използват за моделиране на процеси в икономиката, епидемиологията, биологията, опазване на обществената сигурност (ограничаване на използването на наркотици) и др. Тук разглеждаме модел на оптимално инвестиране в образование на макроикономическо ниво [11], на ограничаване на последствията от разпространението на СПИН [9], на пазар на права за въглеродни емисии [3, 4] и на оптимален макроикономически растеж при повишаване на нивото на върховите технологии [1]. Ключови думи: оптимално управление, непрекъснати хетерогенни динамични системи, приложения в икономиката и епидемиолегията