| This dissertation contains three separate but interrelated papers. Essay 1 assesses the intertemporal impact of the Individual Retirement Account (IRA) program on federal government revenue. It is shown that the traditional IRA has a positive effect and the Roth IRA has a negative effect on government revenue. A new type of IRA is proposed as a replacement to the Roth IRA. Essay 2 assesses the intertemporal impact on government revenue of eliminating the capital gains tax on corporate equities. This essay considers changes in aggregate investment as well as personal and corporate income taxes; these features have not previously appeared in the related literature. Simulations from the optimal control model predict that eliminating the capital gains tax on corporate equities may increase government revenue in the long term. In the third essay, a general equilibrium optimal control model is used to derive the endogenous or optimal rate of discount that applies to public investment in education, natural resources, and public cleanup efforts at waste sites. Among other things, this essay addresses the issues of zero discounting, hyperbolic discounting, and discounting in public planning problems that span multiple generations of time. |
