In estimating the economic effects of public policy, comparative static models typically assume homogenous factors that are either mobile or immobile. For changes designed to improve factor allocations, the former assumption would overstate welfare gains, while the latter would understate them. The model in this paper restricts each industry's capital reduction to its rate of depreciation. The stock of depreciated capital represents an industry-specific type of capital that may earn a lower equilibrium return. This model suggests that previous estimates of efficiency gains from integration of U. S. personal and corporate income taxes are overstated by $5 billion.

This paper suggests two generalizations of the deposit-refund idea. In the first, we apply the idea not just to solid waste materials, but to any waste from production or consumption including wastes that may be solid, gaseous, or liquid. Using a simple general equilibrium model, we derive the optimal combination of a tax on a purchased commodity and subsidy to a clean' activity (such as emission abatement, recycling, or disposal in a sanitary landfill). This two-part instrument' is equivalent to a Pigovian tax on the dirty' activity (such as emissions, dumping, or litter). In the second generalization, we consider the case where government must use distorting taxes on labor and capital incomes. To help meet the revenue requirement, would the optimal deposit be raised and the refund reduced? We derive the second-best revenue-raising DRS or two-part instrument to answer that question.

The authors describe a model in which rental and owner housing are risky assets, tenure choice is endogenous, and each household is constrained to consume the same amount of owner housing that it has in its investment portfolio. Equilibrium net rates of return are major determinants of the amount of owner housing, but a logit model indicates that demographic factors are the main determinants of ownership rates. In their simulation, taxes on owner housing would raise welfare not only by reallocating capital but also by the government's taking part of the risk from individual properties and diversifying it away. Copyright 1992 by University of Chicago Press.

We describe a model in which rental and owner housing are risky assets, tenure choice is endogenous, and each household is constrained to consume the same amount of owner housing that it has in its investment portfolio. At each iteration in the search for an equilibrium, we determine the new taxable income for each of 3,578 households (from the Survey of Consumer Finances), and we use statutory schedules to find the marginal rate and tax paid. Equilibrium net rates of return are major determinants of the amount of owner housing, but a logit model indicates that demographic factors are the main determinants of ownership rates. In our simulation, taxes on owner housing would raise welfare not only by reallocating capital but also by the government's taking part of the risk from individual properties and diversifying it away. Measures to disallow property tax or mortgage interest deductions do not help share this risk. Simulations of the 1986 tax reform indicate a small shift from rental to owner housing and welfare gains from reallocating risk.

Marginal excess burden, defined as the change in deadweight loss for an additional dollar of tax revenue, has been measured for labor taxes, output taxes, and capital taxes generally.This paper points out that there is no well-defined way to raise capital taxes in general, because the taxation of income from capital depends on many different policy instruments including the statutory corporate income tax rate, the investment tax credit rate, depreciation lifetimes, declining balance rates for depreciation allowances, and personal tax rates on noncorporate income, interest receipts, dividends, and capital gains.Marginal excess burden is measured for each of these different capital tax instruments, using a general equilibrium model that encompasses distortions in the allocation of real resources over time, among industries, between the corporate and noncorporate sectors, and among diverse types of equipment, structures, inventories, and land.Although numerical results are sensitive to specifications for key substitution elasticity parameters, important qualitative results are not.We find that an increase in the corporate rate has the highest marginal excess burden, because it distorts intersectoral and interasset decisions as well as intertemporal decisions.At the other extreme, an investment tax credit reduction has negative marginal excess burden because it raises revenue while reducing interasset distortions more than it Increases intertemporal distortions.In general, we find that marginal excess burdens of different capital tax instruments vary significantly.They can be more or less than the marginal excess burden of the payroll tax or the progressive personal income tax.

This paper represents part of a larger ongoing project to build and use a numerical general equilibrium model of the U.S. tax system. Charles Ballard,