Optimal fiscal policy with labor selection

Abstract

This paper characterizes long-run and short-run optimal fiscal policy in the labor selection framework. Quantitatively, the time-series volatility of the labor income tax rate is orders of magnitude larger than the "tax-smoothing" results based on Walrasian labor markets, but is a few times smaller than the results based on search and matching labor markets. To understand these results in terms of model primitives, we develop a welfare-relevant analytic concept of externalities for the selection model, which we label "tightness." This concept of tightness is the source of the decentralized economy's inefficient cross-sectional wage premia between the average newly-hired worker and the marginal newly-hired worker. Compared to the traditional concept of labor-market tightness in the search and matching literature, this new concept of tightness plays a highly similar role, and, like in the matching model, is crucial for understanding efficiency and optimal policy.