Growth with Optimal Taxation and Public Spending Composition

Incorporating endogenous public spending, the basic characteristic of the Barro model, into the Chamley model, this paper discusses the optimal taxation and public spending composition in economic growth. The two-stage backward induction method is adopted to explore the general optimality (including the first and second best) conditions for taxation and public spending, and the explicit solutions to optimal taxation and public spending composition are showed in a specific example. Finally, we estimate China's optimal level of macro tax burden with the help of numerical calculation.