Egbert Jongen, a researcher at the CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis and a lecturer at Leiden University, held on November 10, 2022, a scientific lecture on optimal taxation at the Institute of Public Finance. According to the theory of optimal taxation, a tax system should be chosen to maximize a social welfare function subject to a set of constraints. The optimal tax schedule depends on the social planner's preferences for income redistribution, on the distribution of individual abilities and income, and on the behaviour of individuals in the context of changing marginal tax rates, that is, on the elasticity of labour supply and taxable income. The field of optimal taxation is one of the most popular topics in public sector economics, and its application can provide particularly important practical results for economic policy.

 

Egbert Jongen received his doctorate from the Free University Amsterdam, and is the author of numerous scientific papers published in prestigious journals, such as Journal of Public Economics, Labour Economics and Journal of Population Economics.

 

The lecture on optimal taxation was held for members of the research project Impact of taxes and benefits on income distribution and economic efficiency, financed by the Croatian Science Foundation, and consisted of two parts: a theoretical overview and an application to the Netherlands.