演講摘要 : This paper studies a class of AK-type growth models with public capital stock and elastic labor supply. The government taxes both factor incomes and conduct expenditure. To rationalize the taxation, government expenditure affects the productivity of private sectors. It shows the existence of a unique balanced-growth path, near which there is only a transitional dynamic path leading the economy toward it. It finds that while a higher capital tax rate reduces economic growth in the short run, its long-term growth effect is ambiguous, and this long-term growth effect remains ambiguous even if the level of tax rate is larger than the degree of government externality. However, a higher labor tax rate always lowers economic growth both in the short run and in the long run, despite the existence of productive government taxation. Our finding that labor taxation is always detrimental, while capital taxation may be beneficial, is in contradicting to conventional wisdom that labor taxation is better than capital taxation, from the economic growth point of view.
