housing market responses to transaction taxes evidence from notches and stimulus in the uk we investigate housing market responses to transaction taxes using administrative data on all property transactions in the u k from 2004 to 2012 combined with quasi experimental variation from tax notches and tax stimulus we present two main findings first transaction taxes are highly distortionary across a range of margins causing large distortions to the price volume and timing of property transactions secondly temporary transaction tax cuts are an enormously effective form of fiscal stimulus a temporary elimination of a 1 transaction tax increased housing market activity by 20 in the short run due to both timing and extensive responses and less than half of the stimulus effect was reversed after the tax was reintroduced due to re timing because of the complementarities between moving house and consumer spending these stimulus effects translate into extra spending per dollar of tax cut equal to about 1 we interpret our empirical findings in the context of a housing model with downpayment constraints in which leverage amplifies the effects of transaction taxes

individual taxpayer response to tax cuts 1982 1984 with implications for the revenue maximizing tax rate abstract this paper measures the response of taxpayers to the u s personal rate reductions from 1982 to 1984 a baseline income distribution is created to describe what level and distribution could be expected in the absence of tax changes comparison of this baseline with actual tax return data shows that at least one sixth and probably one quarter of the revenue ascribable to the rate reductions was recouped by changes in taxpayer behavior the data also show that federal income tax revenue would have been maximized at a tax rate of about 35 percent and total income tax revenue maximized at a total tax rate of about 40 percent

taxation and international migration of superstars evidence from the european football market we analyze the effects of top tax rates on international migration of football players in 14 european countries since 1985 both country case studies and multinomial regressions show evidence of strong mobility responses to tax rates with an elasticity of the number of foreign domestic players to the net of tax rate around one around 0 15 we also find evidence of sorting effects low taxes attract highability players who displace low ability players and displacement effects low taxes on foreigners displace domestic players those results can be rationalized in a simple model of migration and taxation with rigid labor demand jel f22 h24 h31 j44 j61 l83

the impact of state taxes on pass through businesses evidence from the 2012 kansas income tax reform abstract in 2012 kansas undertook a large scale tax reform that excluded pass through business income from individual taxation in theory these changes enhance the incentives to undertake more real economic activity such as new business formation or expansion of existing businesses the reform also increased the incentive to avoid taxation by recharacterizing income sources this paper provides evidence of these effects using federal administrative income tax data spanning 2010 2014 several findings suggest that on both the extensive and intensive margins the pass through exclusion led to increased tax avoidance in the form of income recharacterization and shifting of effort from activities compensated through wages to those compensated with business income we do not find much evidence however that the kansas reform led to increases in real economic activity

does cutting the tax rate to zero induce behavior different from other tax cuts evidence from pakistan using a series of pakistani tax reforms and administrative records i document that taxable income responses induced by to zero tax cuts are orders of magnitude larger than ones induced by similar

taxing top ceo incomes we use a firm ceo assignment framework to model the market for ceo effective labor in the model s equilibrium more talented ceos match with and supply more effort to larger firms taxation of ceo incomes affects the equilibrium pricing of ceo effective labor and hence spills over and affects firm profits absent the ability to tax profits or a direct concern for firm owners a standard prescription for high marginal income taxes emerges however given such an ability or concern the optimal marginal tax rates are much lower

the incidence of personal income taxation evidence from the tax reform act of 1986 abstract this paper studies the short run incidence of personal income taxation in the us by examining how the wage structure shifted after the tax reform act of 1986 i calculate the marginal tax rate for the median worker of each occupation during the 1980s to determine the professions whose workers were most affected by the tax change when controlling for trends over time in the wage structure by occupation i find that individuals in occupations that experienced large decreases in their median marginal tax rates received lower pre tax wages after 1986 as the number of workers and the hours worked in those professions increased the results suggest that consideration of the wage effects of tax reforms is important when using these reforms to identify behavioral parameters and evaluating their distributional consequences

optimal redistribution and monitoring of labor supply this paper extends the mirrlees 1971 model of optimal non linear income taxation with a monitoring technology that allows the government to verify labor supply at a positive but non infinite cost we analyze the joint determination of the non linear monitoring and tax schedules and the conditions under which these can be implemented monitoring of labor supply reduces the distortions created by income taxation and raises optimal marginal tax rates possibly above 100 the optimal intensity of monitoring increases with the marginal tax rate and the labor supply elasticity our simulations demonstrate that monitoring strongly alleviates the trade off between equity and efficiency welfare gains of monitoring are around 2 8 of total output the optimal intensity of monitoring follows a u shaped pattern similar to that of optimal marginal tax rates our paper can explain why large welfare states optimally rely on work dependent tax credits active labor market policies benefit sanctions and work bonuses in welfare programs

the evolution of high incomes in northern america lessons from canadian evidence this paper uses tax statistics to construct new series on canadian top income shares from 1920 to 2000 and provides a systematic comparison with the u s experience as in the united states top income shares in canada display a ushaped pattern over the century with a precipitous drop during world war ii followed by a slower decline until 1970 since the late 1970s top income shares have been increasing dramatically and the very top shares are now as high as in the pre war era as in the united states the recent increase in top income shares is the consequence of a surge in top wages and salaries the canadian experience since the late 1970s does not appear to be well explained by tax changes suggesting that the upward trend in canada derives from the united states perhaps because many high income canadians have an emigration option this in turn suggests that the recent increase in u s personal income top shares is not merely a change in tax reporting behavior the recent sharp increase in top income shares in canada is of the same magnitude at the individual and family level and is not due to an increase in income mobility

the long run determinants of inequality what can we learn from top income data this paper studies determinants of income inequality using a newly assembled panel of 16 countries over the entire twentieth century we focus on three groups of income earners the rich p99 100

positive and normative judgments implicit in u s tax policy and the costs of unequal growth and recessions calculating the welfare implications of changes to economic policy or shocks requires economists to decide on a normative criterion one approach is to elicit the relevant moral criteria from real world policy choices converting a normative decision into a positive inference as in the recent surge of inverse optimum research we find that capitalizing on the potential of this approach is not as straightforward as we might hope we perform the inverse optimum inference on u s tax policy from 1979 through 2010 and argue that the results either undermine the normative relevance of the approach or challenge conventional assumptions upon which economists routinely rely when performing welfare evaluations

using elasticities to derive optimal income tax rates this paper derives optimal income tax formulas using compensated and uncompensated elasticities of earnings with respect to tax rates a simple formula for the high income optimal tax rate is obtained as a function of these elasticities and the thickness of the top tail of the income distribution in the general non linear income tax problem this method using elasticities shows precisely how the different economic effects come into play and which are the key relevant parameters in the optimal income tax formulas of mirrlees the optimal non linear tax rate formulas are expressed in terms of elasticities and the shape of the income distribution these formulas are implemented numerically using empirical earning distributions and a range of realistic elasticity parameters

an empirical model of labor supply in a life cycle setting this paper formulates and estimates a structural intertemporal model of labor supply using theoretical characterizations derived from an economic model of lifetime behavior a two step empirical analysis yields estimates of intertemporal and uncompensated substitution effects which provide the information needed to predict the response of hours of work to life cycle wage growth and shifts in the lifetime wage path

bounds on elasticities with optimization frictions a synthesis of micro and macro evidence on labor supply how can price elasticities be identified when agents face optimization frictions such as adjustment costs or inattention i derive bounds on structural price elasticities that are a function of the observed effect of a price change on demand the size of the price change and the degree of frictions the degree of frictions is measured by the utility losses agents tolerate to deviate from the frictionless optimum the bounds imply that frictions affect intensive margin elasticities much more than extensive margin elasticities i apply these bounds to the literature on labor supply the utility costs of ignoring the tax changes used to identify intensive margin labor supply elasticities are typically less than 1 of earnings as a result small frictions can explain the differences between micro and macro elasticities extensive and intensive margin elasticities and other disparate findings pooling estimates from existing studies i estimate a hicksian labor supply elasticity of 0 33 on the intensive margin and 0 25 on the extensive margin after accounting for frictions

the evolution of wealth inequality over half a century the role of taxes transfers and technology over the last 50 years the u s tax system went through a striking transformation that reduced the effective tax rates for top income groups and raised transfers to seniors this paper investigates the macroeconomic repercussions of this change in policy particularly for the distributions of income wealth and consumption changes in taxes and transfers account for nearly half of the rise in wealth concentration nonetheless their impact on the distributions of income and consumption has been minor due to changes in equilibrium prices and the offsetting effects of tax cuts and transfers on the dispersion of consumption results highlight the role of increasing wage dispersion during this period as the main driver of trends in inequality

labor income responds differently to income tax and payroll tax reforms we estimate the responses of gross labor income with respect to marginal and average net of tax rates in france over the period 2003 2006 we exploit a series of reforms to the income tax and payroll tax schedules affecting individuals who earn less than twice the minimum wage our estimate for the elasticity of gross labor income with respect to the marginal net of income tax rate is around 0 2 while we find no response to the marginal net of payroll tax rate the elasticity with respect to the average net of tax rate is not significant for the income tax schedule while it is close to 1 for the payroll tax schedule a plausible explanation is the existence of significant labor supply responses to the income tax schedule combined with sticky posted wages i e the gross labor income minus payroll taxes divided by hours worked finally the effect of the net of income tax rate seems to be driven by participation decisions in particular those of married women

micro and macro labor supply elasticities a reassessment of conventional wisdom the response of aggregate labor supply to various changes in the economic environ ment is central to many economic issues especially the optimal design of tax policies conventional wisdom based on studies in the 1980s and 1990s has long held that the analysis of micro data leads one to conclude that aggregate labor supply elasticities are quite small in this paper we argue that this conventional wisdom does not hold up to empirically reasonable and relevant extensions of simple life cycle models that served as the basis for these conclusions in particular we show that several pieces of conventional wisdom fail in the presence of human capital accumulation or labor supply decisions that allow for adjustment along both the extensive and intensive margin we conclude that previous estimates of small labor supply elasticities based on micro data are fully consistent with large aggregate labor supply elasticities jel d91 e24 j22

marginal tax rates and income new time series evidence this paper estimates the dynamic effects of marginal tax rate changes on income reported on tax returns in the united states over the 1950 2010 period after isolating exogenous variation in average marginal tax rates in structural vector autoregressions using a narrative identification approach i find large positive effects of tax cuts in the top 1 of the income distribution in contrast to earlier findings based on tax return data i also find large effects in other income percentile brackets a hypothetical tax reform cutting marginal rates only for the top 1 leads to sizeable increases in top 1 incomes and has a positive effect on real gdp there are also spillover effects to incomes outside of the top 1 but top marginal rate cuts lead to greater inequality in pre tax incomes

measuring permanent responses to capital gains tax changes in panel data the authors use panel data and information about differences in state tax rates to separate the effects of transitory and permanent tax rate changes on capital gains realizations behavior the estimated effect of permanent change is substantially smaller than the effect of transitory change the difference is even larger than differences between estimates from past micro data studies which have primarily measured the transitory effect and time series studies which have primarily measured the permanent effect the authors results resolve a long standing conflict between micro data and time series studies of how marginal tax rates affect capital gains realizations behavior copyright 1994 by american economic association

imitation contagion or exertion using a tax reform to reveal how colleagues sick leaves influence worker behaviour we analyse the social interaction effects in sick leave behaviour in the workplace using high quality norwegian matched employer employee data with detailed individual information on sick leaves during the 2004 2006 period we find that social interaction effects in sick leave behaviour in the workplace do exist and that the effects are noticeable in size the strong relationship between the sick leave rates among colleagues is not solely the result of contagious diseases nor is it caused by improved informational quality or by the increased workload for the non absent workers evidence supports the existence of reciprocal worker behaviour that is unrelated to joint leisure seeking activities

the optimal elasticity of taxable income abstract the strength of the behavioral response to a tax rate change depends on the environment individuals operate in and may be manipulated by instruments controlled by the government we first derive a measure of the social benefit to affecting this elasticity the paper then examines this effect in the solution to the optimal income taxation problem when such an instrument is available first in a general model and then in an example when the government chooses the income tax base

relativity mobility and optimal nonlinear income taxation in an open economy abstract recent evidence suggests that globalization has reduced the barriers to international labor mobility and induced more cross country social comparisons in an open economy with tax driven migration and consumption externalities relativity we derive an optimal tax formula that subsumes existing ones obtained under a maximin social objective and additively separable utility and sign the second best mirrleesian marginal tax rates for all skill levels we establish the thresholds of the elasticity and level of migration to determine when relativity and inequality act as complements or substitutes in shaping the optimal top tax rate under both nash and stackelberg tax competition if the migration probability of top income workers is approximately 50 numerical calculation using parameter estimates from empirical studies shows that the country with labor inflow outflow implements over 10 lower higher marginal tax rates than suggested by the autarky equilibrium of kanbur and tuomala 2013

capacity allocation and scheduling in supply chains we consider a multiple product supply chain where a manufacturer receives orders from several distributors if the orders cannot all be met from available production capacity then the manufacturer allocates that capacity and a set of resubmittable orders among the distributors the distributors may share their allocated capacity among themselves before submitting revised orders finally the manufacturer schedules the revised orders to minimize its cost we consider three practical coordination issues first we estimate the benefit to the manufacturer from considering scheduling costs and constraints in making capacity and order allocation decisions second we estimate the additional profit that the distributors achieve when they share their allocated capacity third we estimate the value of coordination between the manufacturer and the distributors our work is among the first to consider all three issues simultaneously we model scheduling costs and constraints within the manufacturer s capacity allocation problem we model the distributors capacity sharing problem as a cooperative game that has properties that are unique within cooperative game theory finally we develop optimal algorithms for all the models defined by the three coordination issues our exact evaluation of decisions about the appropriate coordination level improves managers ability to make those decisions

personal income tax reforms a genetic algorithm approach given a settled reduction in the present level of tax revenue and by exploring a very large combinatorial space of tax structures in this paper we employ a genetic algorithm in order to determine the best structure of a real world personal income tax that allows for the maximisation of the redistributive effect of the tax while preventing all taxpayers being worse off than with the present tax structure we take italy as a case study

income inequality in the united states 1913 1998 this paper presents new homogeneous series on top shares of income and wages from 1913 to 1998 in the united states using individual tax returns data top income and wages shares display a u shaped pattern over the century our series suggest that the large shocks that capital owners experienced during the great depression and world war ii have had a permanent effect on top capital incomes we argue that steep progressive income and estate taxation may have prevented large fortunes from fully recovering from these shocks top wage shares were flat before world war ii dropped precipitously during the war and did not start to recover before the late 1960s but are now higher than before world war ii as a result the working rich have replaced the rentiers at the top of the income distribution

toward obtaining a consistent estimate of the elasticity of taxable income using difference in differences abstract the elasticity of taxable income eti is a central parameter for tax policy debates this paper shows that mean reversion prevents most estimators employed in the literature from obtaining consistent estimates of the eti a new method is proposed that will resolve inconsistency due to mean reversion under testable assumptions regarding the degree of serial correlation in the error term using this procedure i estimate an eti of 0 858 which is about twice as large as the estimates found in the most frequently cited paper on this subject 13 the corresponding elasticity of broad income is 0 475

welfare the earned income tax credit and the labor supply of single mothers during 1984 1996 welfare and tax policy were changed to encourage work by single mothers the earned income tax credit was expanded welfare benets were cut welfare time limits were added and welfare cases were terminated medicaid for the working poor was expanded as were training programs and child care during this same time period there were unprecedented increases in the employment and hours of single mothers we show that a large share of the increase in work by single mothers can be attributed to the eitc and other tax changes with smaller shares for welfare benet cuts welfare waivers training programs and child care programs

taxes informality and income shifting evidence from a recent pakistani tax reform abstract this paper examines firm behavior to taxation in a low enforcement and large informality setting using quasi experimental variation created by a tax reform which increased taxation of partnerships substantially relative to firms of other legal form and the population of income tax returns filed in pakistan in 2006 11 i document that treated firms report significantly lower earnings migrate into informality and switch business form in response to the increase in tax rate the revenue loss caused by these behavioral responses is so large that by the third year after the reform the government was collecting less revenue than it would have without the tax increase this implies that the new tax rate was on the wrong side of the laffer curve and would not have been optimal under any social preferences the richness of the data and tax variation permits me to decompose the observed responses into real and evasion margins and to identify fiscal externalities created by the reform on other tax bases the welfare cost of the reform increases by around 40 once these externalities are taken into account

the optimal treatment of tax expenditures abstract this paper analyzes the optimal treatment of tax expenditures it develops an optimal tax model where individuals derive utility from spending on a contribution good such as charitable giving the contribution good has also a public good effect on all individuals in the economy the government imposes linear taxes on earnings and on the contribution good so as to maximize welfare the government may also finance directly the contribution good out of tax revenue optimal tax and subsidy rates on earnings and the contribution good are expressed in terms of empirically estimable parameters and the redistributive tastes of the government the optimal subsidy on the contribution good is increasing in the size of the price elasticity of contributions the size of the crowding out effect of public contributions on private contributions and the size of the public good effect of the contribution good numerical simulations show that the optimal subsidy on contributions is fairly sensitive to the size of these parameters but that in most cases it should be lower than the earnings tax rate

the effect of marginal tax rates on taxable income a panel study of the 1988 tax flattening in canada abstract federal tax reform in 1988 flattened the canadian personal income tax schedule changing the marginal tax rates for many individuals using methods similar to those applied by auten and carroll rev econ 81 4 1999 681 in the study of the effects of the 1986 u s tax reform act we estimate the responsiveness of income to changes in taxes to be substantially smaller in canada however we find evidence of a much higher response in self employment income in the labor income of seniors and from those with high incomes

the elasticity of taxable income with respect to marginal tax rates a critical review this paper critically surveys the large and growing literature estimating the elasticity of taxable income with respect to marginal tax rates using tax return data first we provide a theoretical framework showing under what assumptions this elasticity can be used as a sufficient statistic for efficiency and optimal tax analysis we discuss what other parameters should be estimated when the elasticity is not a sufficient statistic second we discuss conceptually the key issues that arise in the empirical estimation of the elasticity of taxable income using the example of the 1993 top individual income tax rate increase in the united states to illustrate those issues third we provide a critical discussion of selected empirical analyses of the elasticity of taxable income in light of the theoretical and empirical framework we laid out finally we discuss avenues for future research jel h24 h31 j22

the effect of marginal tax rates on taxable income a panel study of the 1986 tax reform act this paper uses a treasury department panel of more than 4 000 taxpayers to estimate the sensitivity of taxable income to changes in tax rates on the basis of a comparison of the tax returns of the same individual taxpayers before and after the 1986 tax reform the analysis emphasizes that the response of taxable income involves much more than a change in the traditional measures of labor supply the evidence shows an elasticity of taxable income with respect to the marginal net of tax rate that is at least one and could be substantially higher the implications for recent tax rate changes are discussed

effects of permanent and transitory tax changes in a life cycle labor supply model with human capital i examine effects of labor income taxation in life cycle models with human capital accumulation in this case the opportunity cost of time equals the wage plus returns to work experience this has several interesting consequences first the data appear consistent with larger labor supply elasticities than prior work suggests second contrary to conventional wisdom permanent tax changes can have larger effects on current labor supply than temporary changes third human capital dampens responses of young workers to transitory tax changes fourth labor supply elasticities increase with age fifth human capital amplifies the effect of permanent tax changes in the long run

a simpler theory of optimal capital taxation abstract this paper develops a theory of optimal capital taxation that expresses optimal tax formulas in sufficient statistics we first consider a simple model with utility functions linear in consumption and featuring heterogeneous utility for wealth in this case there are no transitional dynamics the steady state is reached immediately and has finite elasticities of capital with respect to the net of tax rate this allows for a tractable optimal tax analysis with formulas expressed in terms of empirical elasticities and social preferences that can address many important policy questions these formulas can easily be taken to the data to simulate optimal taxes which we do using u s tax return data on labor and capital incomes second we show how these results can be extended to the case with concave utility for consumption the same types of formulas carry over by appropriately defining elasticities we show that one can recover all the results from the simpler model using a new and non standard steady state approach that respects individual preferences even with a fully general utility function

dynamic income progressive taxes and the timing of charitable contributions using an econometric model of charitable giving and a 10 year panel of tax return data i find that previous studies have underestimated the effects of permanent income and overestimated the effects of permanent changes in tax prices the significant statutory tax changes that occurred during the 1980s especially in 1986 serve to identify the key model parameters my results imply that people smooth their giving when transitory income changes but also time their giving to exploit transitory changes in tax prices the results also raise questions about how effectively the tax incentives permanently influence the level rather than just the timing of charitable giving by individuals

is economics useful for public policy economists have always played an important role in major public policy debates even so i believe that the role of economists in these public policy discussions has often been misguided because it has typically relied upon best practices stated in the form of general guidelines or even universal principles however best practices are not best if the specific situation does not conform with the assumptions that underlie the advice so my first conclusion is a cautionary and negative one specific circumstances differ so profoundly across individuals firms markets countries and time that most any attempt to define best practices that apply in all circumstances will lead to profoundly misleading public policy recommendations however even if economics cannot identify the truth it can often identify a truth so my second conclusion is a more positive one economists should continue to develop multiple theories that inform public policies but we should also focus our efforts on identifying and testing the critical assumptions that drive the results of these theories recognizing that the validity of any assumptions will depend intimately on specific circumstances i illustrate these two main conclusions with specific examples from my own work i conclude with some best practices recommendations of my own recognizing the obvious irony of such an effort

the effect of income taxes on household income research on the distribution of income during the 1980s has identified a trend towards increasing inequality which may be the continuation and acceleration of trends spanning several decades this paper explores to what extent behavioral responses to the tax changes during the 1980s may also explain the rising inequality the 1986 tax reform act is used as a natural experiment to explore the roles played by both taxes and a variety of nontax factors our principal finding is that both tax rates and nontax factors appear to have had significant effects on relative income growth during the late 1980s

top incomes in the long run of history a recent literature has constructed top income shares time series over the long run for more than twenty countries using income tax statistics top incomes represent a small share of the population but a very significant share of total income and total taxes paid hence aggregate economic growth per capita and gini inequality indexes are sensitive to excluding or including top incomes we discuss the estimation methods and issues that arise when constructing top income share series including income definition and comparability over time and across countries tax avoidance and tax evasion we provide a summary of the key empirical findings most countries experience a dramatic drop in top income shares in the first part of the twentieth century in general due to shocks to top capital incomes during the wars and depression shocks top income shares do not recover in the immediate postwar decades however over the last thirty years top income shares have increased substantially in english speaking countries and in india and china but not in continental european countries or japan this increase is due in part to an unprecedented surge in top wage incomes as a result wage income comprises a larger fraction of top incomes than in the past finally we discuss the theoretical and empirical models that have been proposed to account for the facts and the main questions that remain open

the evolution of income concentration in japan 1886 2005 evidence from income tax statistics abstract this paper studies the evolution of income concentration in japan from 1886 to 2005 by constructing long run series of top income shares and top wage income shares using income tax statistics we find that i income concentration was extremely high throughout the pre wwii period during which the nation underwent rapid industrialization ii a drastic de concentration of income at the top took place in 1938 1945 iii income concentration remained low during the rest of the century but shows some sign of increase in the last decade and iv top income composition in japan has shifted dramatically from capital income to employment income over the course of the twentieth century we attribute the precipitous fall in income concentration during wwii primarily to the collapse of capital income due to wartime regulations and inflation we argue that the change in the institutional structure under the occupational reforms made the one time income de concentration difficult to reverse in contrast t

the effect of marginal tax rates on income a panel study of bracket creep this paper uses a panel of individual tax returns and the bracket creep as source of tax rate variation to construct instrumental variables estimates of the sensitivity of income to changes in tax rates from 1979 to 1981 the us income tax schedule was fixed in nominal terms while inflation was high around 10 this produced a real change in tax rate schedules taxpayers near the top end of a tax bracket were more likely to creep to a higher bracket and thus experience a rise in marginal rates the following year than the other taxpayers compensated elasticities can be estimated by comparing the differences in changes in income between taxpayers close to the top end of a tax bracket to the other taxpayers these estimates based on comparisons between very similar groups are robust to underlying changes in the income distribution such as a rise in inequality the elasticities of taxable income and adjusted gross income are around 0 4 and significant but the elasticities of wage income are in general insignificant and close to zero 2002 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

the use of regression statistics to analyze imperfect pricing policies corrective taxes can solve many market failures but actual policies frequently deviate from the theoretical ideal because of administrative or political constraints we present a method to quantif

optimal dynamic carbon taxes in a climate economy model with distortionary fiscal policy how should carbon be taxed as a part of fiscal policy the literature on optimal carbon pricing often abstracts from other taxes however when governments raise revenues with distortionary taxes carbon levies have fiscal impacts while they raise revenues directly they may shrink the bases of other taxes e g by decreasing employment this article theoretically characterizes and then quantifies optimal carbon taxes in a dynamic general equilibrium climate economy model with distortionary fiscal policy first this article establishes a novel theoretical relationship between the optimal taxation of carbon and of capital income this link arises because carbon emissions destroy natural capital they accumulate in the atmosphere and decrease future output consequently this article shows how the standard logic against capital income taxes extends to distortions on environmental capital investments second this article characterizes optimal climate policy in sub optimal fiscal settings where income taxes are constrained to remain at their observed levels third this article presents a detailed calibration that builds on the seminal dice approach but adds features essential for a setting with distortionary taxes such as a differentiation between climate change production impacts e g on agriculture and direct utility impacts e g on biodiversity existence value the central quantitative finding is that optimal carbon tax schedules are 8 24 lower when there are distortionary taxes compared to the setting with lump sum taxes considered in the literature

optimal tax administration abstract this paper sets out a framework for analyzing optimal interventions by a tax administration one that parallels and can be closely integrated with established frameworks for thinking about optimal tax policy its key contribution is the development of a summary measure of the impact of administrative interventions the enforcement elasticity of tax revenue that is a sufficient statistic for the behavioral response to such interventions much as the elasticity of taxable income serves as a sufficient statistic for the response to tax rates among the applications are characterizations of the optimal balance between policy and administrative measures and of the optimal compliance gap

hourly wage rate and taxable labor income responsiveness to changes in marginal tax rates recently a voluminous literature estimating the taxable income elasticity has emerged as an important field in empirical public economics however to a large extent it is still unknown how the hourly wage rate an important component of taxable income reacts to changes in marginal tax rates in this study we use a rich panel data set and a sequence of tax reforms that took place in sweden during the 1980 s to estimate the elasticity of the hourly wage rate with respect to the net of tax rate while carefully accounting for the endogeneity of marginal tax rates as well as other factors that determine wage rates we do find a statistically significant response both among married men and married women the hourly wage rate elasticity with respect to the net of tax rate is estimated to 0 14 0 16 for males and 0 41 0 57 for females in addition we obtain uncompensated taxable labor income elasticities of around 0 21 for men and 0 96 1 44 for women in contrast to earlier studies we also find significant income effects for males accordingly for males the compensated taxable labor income elasticity is about 4 percentage points higher than the uncompensated one

liquidation under moral hazard optimal debt maturity and loan commitments abstract this paper examines the benefits and limitations of loan commitment financing commitments enable firms to adopt more efficient liquidation policies we demonstrate however that the limitations of commitment financing depend on a number of firm characteristics in some circumstances firms find long term debt to be a superior alternative to commitment financing this provides a possible explanation for why loan commitments are not universally utilized by considering both the benefits as well as the limitations of loan commitment financing we are also able to integrate loan commitment contracts into a model of optimal debt maturity

what happens when you tax the rich evidence from executive compensation this paper examines the responsiveness of taxable income to changes in marginal tax rates using detailed compensation data on several thousand corporate executives from 1991 to 1995 the data confirm that the higher marginal rates of 1993 led to a significant decline in taxable income indeed this small group of executives may account for as much as 20 percent of the aggregate change in wage and salary income for approximately the one million richest taxpayers over this time period one person alone can account for more than 2 percent the decline however is almost entirely a short run shift in the timing of compensation rather than a permanent reduction in taxable income the short run elasticity of taxable income with respect to the net of tax share exceeds one in this sample but the elasticity after one year is at most 0 4 and probably closer to zero breaking out the tax responsiveness of different types of compensation shows that the large short run responses come almost entirely from a large inc

adjustment costs firm responses and micro vs macro labor supply elasticities evidence from danish tax records we show that the effects of taxes on labor supply are shaped by interactions between adjustment costs for workers and hours constraints set by firms we develop a model in which firms post job offers characterized by an hours requirement and workers pay search costs to find jobs we present evidence supporting three predictions of this model by analyzing bunching at kinks using danish tax records first larger kinks generate larger taxable income elasticities second kinks that apply to a larger group of workers generate larger elasticities third the distribution of job offers is tailored to match workers aggregate tax preferences in equilibrium our results suggest that macro elasticities may be substantially larger than the estimates obtained using standard microeconometric methods

the elasticity of taxable income during the 1990s new estimates and sensitivity analyses author affiliation seth h giertz sgiertz2 unl edu acknowledgment the author wishes to thank david weiner ed harris bob dennis doug hamilton tom woodward emmanuel saez chris bollinger and three anonymous referees for their comments and assistance 1 introductioneconomists have long recognized that taxation creates economic inefficiency by distorting relative prices often between leisure and all other goods in the economy even a broad based income tax can have substantial efficiency costs so long as leisure remains untaxed harberger 1964 uses this as motivation for comparing the efficiency implications of direct versus indirect taxation in so doing he shows how labor supply elasticities can be used to measure the efficiency implications of income taxation 1 harberger s analysis had a profound influence on public and labor economists spurring increased research into labor supply elasticities which were seen as proxies for the efficiency costs from taxation more than two decades after harberger economists began to emphasize the variety of other margins over which taxes can distort behavior in addition to hours worked these economists noted that these other behavioral responses may too have important implications for efficiency an important building block in the evolution of this literature was set forth by slemrod 1990 who presented a hierarchy of behavioral responses to taxation slemrod divided behavior into three categories based on their responsiveness to taxes his least responsive category real responses includes individuals changing consumption and work patterns and businesses altering investment and production decisions second in order of responsiveness is circumvention which includes both illegally evasion and legally avoidance bypassing the tax system 2 in the case of evasion income is concealed from tax authorities or factors that offset tax liabilities such as expenses and deductions are inflated beyond what is legally permitted in the case of avoidance income is shifted in order to receive more favorable tax treatment diverting income into a tax deferred retirement account is an example of avoidance 3 included in circumvention is the expenditure of time and money necessary to avoid or evade taxation third on the hierarchy and the most responsive is the timing of income receipt which includes pulling the receipt of income into the previous year or pushing it into the next in order to take advantage of more favorable tax treatment while not altering real behavior 4 slemrod further recognizes that the type of behavioral response could have implications for both tax revenue and tax incidence and in some cases efficiency predating slemrod s insights lindsey 1987 produced elasticity estimates for taxable income although what lindsey termed taxable income more closely approximates adjusted gross income agi instead of labor supply 5 lindsey s estimated elasticities were much larger than the labor supply literature would have suggested lindsey emphasized the revenue implications of the elasticity of taxable income eti but not its efficiency implications building on slemrod and lindsey feldstein 1995 produced eti estimates but went much further than lindsey in describing the behaviors that could affect taxable income he argued that many of these behaviors were not captured by labor supply elasticities furthermore feldstein posited that income taxation creates economic inefficiency not only by distorting the relative price between labor and leisure but more broadly by distorting the relative price between goods or activities that are taxed and those that are not taxed since leisure is not the only untaxed activity for example in response to taxes not only work hours but also work effort might change

tax avoidance and the deadweight loss of the income tax traditional analyses of the income tax greatly underestimate deadweight losses by ignoring its effect on forms of compensation and patterns of consumption the full deadweight loss is easily calculated using the compensated elasticity of taxable income to changes in tax rates because leisure excludable income and deductible consumption are a hicksian composite good microeconomic estimates imply a deadweight loss of as much as 30 of revenue or more than ten times harberger s classic 1964 estimate the relative deadweight loss caused by increasing existing tax rates is substantially greater and may exceed 2 per 1 of revenue

planes ships and taxes charging for international aviation and maritime emissions international aviation and maritime transport account for a significant and growing share of global carbon emissions yet they are not only excluded from the kyoto agreement and all current carbon pricing schemes but do not even pay fuel excises of the type standard for other transport activities moreover each sector benefits from preferential tax treatment failure to charge vat on international aviation and the application of tonnage tax regimes rather than the normal corporate tax in maritime this paper considers the design of fuel charges in these sectors to address these distortions and quantifies their impact on emissions revenue and welfare showing amongst other things that the gain from offsetting the pre existing tax distortions may be as significant as those from reducing emissions it shows too how compensation schemes can be designed to protect the poorest countries a key ingredient in the politics of the issue given the practical need for wide applicability of such charges the real challenge is to amass the degree of international cooperation required especially strong for maritime failure of which to some degree explains their current under taxation and unsurprisingly to decide who gets the money technically these charges should if anything be rather easy to implement michael keen ian parry and jon strand

the long run history of income inequality in denmark we use historical publications and micro data from the tax returns to construct internationally comparable estimates of the development in income inequality in denmark over the last 140 years the study shows that income inequality and top income shares have declined during several distinct phases in between periods of stability furthermore the quality of the danish data allows us to analyse not only the development in top income shares but also broader inequality measures such as the gini coefficient these analyses show that top income shares are a good proxy for the overall level of inequality

tax bases tax rates and the elasticity of reported income abstract tax reforms usually change both tax rates and tax bases using a panel of income tax returns spanning the two major u s tax reforms of the 1980s and a number of smaller tax law changes i find that the elasticity of income reported on personal income tax returns depends on the available deductions this highlights that this key behavioral elasticity is not an immutable parameter but rather that it can be to some extent controlled by policy makers one implication is that base broadening reduces the marginal efficiency cost of taxation the results are very similar for all income categories indicating that the rich are more responsive to tax rates because tax rules that apply to them are different their tax base is narrower the point estimates indicate that the tax reform act of 1986 reduced the marginal cost of collecting a dollar of tax revenue with roughly half of this reduction due to the base broadening and the other half due to the tax rate reduction as a by product the analysis in this paper offers a reconciliation of disparate estimates obtained by previous studies of the tax responsiveness of income

relocation of the rich migration in response to top tax rate changes from spanish reforms a spanish reform granted regions the authority to set income tax rates resulting in substantial tax differentials using administrative data we find that conditional on moving taxes have a signi

taxation and top incomes in canada we estimate the elasticity of reported income with respect to tax rates for high earners using sub national variation across canadian provinces we argue this allows for better identification of tax elasticities than the existing literature we find that elasticities of reported income at the provincial level are large for incomes in the top 1 but small for lower earners there are strong indications that the response happens both through earned and capital income while our estimated elasticities are large changes in tax rates cannot explain much of the overall long run trend of higher income concentration in canada resume fiscalite et revenus les plus eleves au canada les auteurs evaluent l elasticite du revenu declare par rapport aux taux d imposition pour les revenus les plus eleves en utilisant les variations intra nationales a travers les provinces du canada ils suggerent que cela produit une meilleure identification des elasticites que ce que contient la litterature pour le moment on decouvre que les elasticites du revenu declare sont elevees pour les 1 au sommet mais faibles pour les revenus plus bas il appert fortement que la reponse se produit tant pour les revenus gagnes que pour les revenus d investissement meme si les elasticites mesurees sont elevees les changements dans les taux d imposition ne peuvent pas expliquer beaucoup de la tendance a long terme vers une plus forte concentration des hauts revenus au canada

reported gross income and marginal tax rates estimation of the behavioural reactions of spanish taxpayers this article estimates for the spanish personal income tax the elasticity of reported gross income to marginal tax rates the identification of this elasticity has been performed using the reform approved by law 35 2006 which came into force in january 2007 the elasticities obtained suggest the existence of important efficiency costs with significant regional differences the average elasticity estimated for spain as a whole is 0 676 however this elasticity is highly dispersed throughout the spanish administrative regions which indicates the unequal power of distortion of the tax thus households whose principal source of income is salary display an elasticity of 0 337 compared to 0 682 for households whose main income source comes from business or savings lastly a positive correlation is also detected between elasticity and income level an elasticity of 3 6 is reached for taxpayers with an annual gross income exceeding 100 000

devolving fiscal policy migration and tax yields abstractdevolution of taxes to sub national jurisdictions could reduce expected tax revenue if some households move to lower tax regimes constraining devolved government policy this paper develop

dividend taxes and income shifting this paper analyzes whether a dividend tax cut for owner managers of closely held corporations encourages income shifting income generation or both we use rich swedish administrative micro data from 2000 to 2011 comprising detailed firm and individual level information we find robust evidence of extensive income shifting across tax bases in response to the 2006 swedish dividend tax cut owner managers of closely held corporations reclassify earned income as dividend income but do not increase total income the response is more pronounced for owner managers with tax incentives and with easier access to income shifting through a high ownership share

does tax policy affect executive compensation evidence from postwar tax reforms abstract the trends in executive pay and labor income tax rates since the 1940s suggest a high elasticity of taxable income with respect to tax policy by contrast the level and structure of executive compensation have been largely unresponsive to tax incentives since the 1980s however the relative tax advantage of different forms of pay was small during this period using a sample of top executives in large firms from 1946 to 2005 we also find a small short run response of salaries qualified stock options and bonuses paid after retirement to changes in tax rates on labor income even though tax rates were significantly higher and more heterogeneous across individuals in the first several decades following wwii we explore several potential explanations for the conflicting impressions given by the long run and short run correlations between taxes and pay including changes in social norms and concerns about pay equality

the economics of attribute based regulation theory and evidence from fuel economy standards in many countries fuel economy standards mandate that vehicles meet a certain fuel economy but heavier or larger vehicles are allowed to meet a lower standard this has the perverse implication of allowing automakers to meet standards either by improving fuel economy or by increasing weight which lowers fuel economy and increases externalities related to accidents this is but one example of an attribute based regulation in which the regulation imposed on a product depends on both the externality it creates and some other attribute attribute basing potentially motivates rms and individuals to strategically alter the attribute thereby endogenously altering the stringency of the regulation this paper develops a theory of attribute basing to demonstrate the costs and benets of its use the paper then empirically examines the consequences of attribute based fuel economy standards in japan where fuel economy standards are a notched attribute based function of vehicle weight we use cross sectional and panel techniques to demonstrate that attribute based regulation has signicantly altered the distribution of vehicle weight in japan where 10 of vehicles bunch at weight notches for cars whose weight is altered in response to the policy we estimate that the alteration generates a welfare loss from the exacerbation of weight related externalities of 1 500 per unit sold which translates into a 700 million annual loss across the japanese auto market

inheritance taxation and wealth effects on the labor supply of heirs abstract the taxation of bequests can have a positive impact on the labor supply of heirs through wealth effects this leads to an increase in labor income tax revenue on top of direct bequest tax revenue we first show in a theoretical model that a simple back of the envelope calculation based on existing estimates for the reduction in earnings after wealth transfers fails the marginal propensity to earn out of unearned income is not a sufficient statistic for the calculation of this effect because i heirs anticipate the reduction in net bequests and adjust their labor supply already prior to inheriting and ii when bequest receipt is stochastic even those who ex post end up not inheriting anything respond ex ante to the implied change in their distribution of net bequests we quantitatively elaborate the size of the overall revenue effect due to labor supply changes of heirs by using a state of the art life cycle model that we calibrate to the german economy besides the joint distribution of income and inheritances quasi experimental evidence regarding the size of wealth effects on labor supply is a key target for this calibration we find that for each euro of bequest tax revenue the government mechanically generates it obtains an additional 9 cents of labor income tax revenue in net present value through higher labor supply of non heirs

the effect of age targeted tax credits on labor force participation of older workers abstract i analyze the effect of income tax policy changes on labor force participation of older workers i exploit two age targeted policy initiatives to promote work at older ages simultaneously implemented in sweden in 2007 an earned income tax credit and a payroll tax credit for workers above age 65 using an age based discontinuity in eligibility criteria i conduct a difference in differences analysis with the reform as an instrument for the net of tax rate i find a participation elasticity with respect to the net of participation tax rate of about 0 22 in the year following the 65th birthday for individuals who were working four years earlier

the elasticity of taxable income evidence and implications abstract a central tax policy parameter that has recently received much attention but about which there is substantial uncertainty is the overall elasticity of taxable income we provide new estimates of this elasticity which address identification problems with previous work by exploiting a long panel of tax returns to study a series of tax reforms throughout the 1980s this identification strategy also allows us to provide new evidence on both the income effects of tax changes on taxable income and on variation in the elasticity of taxable income by income group we find that the overall elasticity of taxable income is approximately 0 4 the elasticity of real income not including tax preferences is much lower we estimate small income effects of tax changes on reported income implying that the compensated and uncompensated elasticities of taxable income are very similar we estimate that this overall elasticity is primarily due to a very elastic response of taxable income for taxpayers who have incomes above 100 000 per year who have an elasticity of 0 57 while for those with incomes below 100 000 per year the elasticity is less than one third as large moreover high income taxpayers who itemize are particularly responsive to taxation our estimates suggest that optimal tax structures may feature tightly targeted transfers to lower income taxpayers and a flat or even declining marginal rate structure for middle and high income taxpayers

nonlinear pricing and the market for settling payments fedwire funds is a real time gross settlement system that uses a decreasing block pricing scheme to attract nonurgent payments a bank s optimal response to fedwire s pricing depends on its perceived benefits to settling nonurgent payments quickly if the urgency for immediate settlement is great enough a bank responds to marginal price otherwise it responds to average price we find banks respond to average price suggesting that fedwire s advantage over competing services of being able to provide immediate settlement is small moreover attempts to increase demand for fedwire services by lowering the cost of banks final block of payments may be ineffective if there is not a corresponding decrease in average cost

how responsive is investment in schooling to changes in redistributive policies and in returns this paper uses an unusual pay reform to test the responsiveness of investment in schooling to changes in redistribution schemes that increase the rate of return to education we exploit an episode where different israeli kibbutzim shifted from equal sharing to productivity based wages in different years and find that students in kibbutzim that reformed earlier invested more in high school education and in the long run also in post secondary schooling we further show that the effect is mainly driven by students in kibbutzim that reformed to a larger degree our findings support the prediction that education is highly responsive to changes in the redistribution policy

higher taxes more evasion evidence from border differentials in tv license fees this paper studies the evasion of tv license fees in austria we exploit border differentials to identify the effect of fees on evasion comparing municipalities at the low and high fee side of state borders reveals that higher fees trigger significantly more evasion our preferred estimator indicates that a one percent increase in fees raises the evasion rate by 0 3 percentage points the positive effect of fees on evasion is confirmed in different parametric and non parametric approaches and survives several robustness checks