Search Results
Working Paper
Heterogeneity in the Pass-Through from Oil to Gasoline Prices: A New Instrument for Estimating the Price Elasticity of Gasoline Demand
We propose a new instrument for estimating the price elasticity of gasoline demand that exploits systematic differences across U.S. states in the pass-through of oil price shocks to retail gasoline prices. We show that these differences are primarily driven by the cost of producing and distributing gasoline, which varies with states’ access to oil and gasoline transportation infrastructure, refinery technology and environmental regulations, creating cross-sectional gasoline price shocks in response to an aggregate oil price shock. Time-varying estimates do not support the view that the ...
Journal Article
Savings programs associated with VITA
There are thousands of Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) sites across the country and more than 250 in Texas. Located at libraries, community colleges, churches and community-based organizations, these sites pop up during tax season in areas accessible to low- and moderate-income (LMI) workers.
Working Paper
Taxes and International Risk Sharing
We examine the extent to which differences in international tax rates may account for the small correlations of per capita consumption fluctuations across countries. Theory implies a close relationship between relative consumption growth, and consumption and capital income tax rate differentials. We find strong empirical evidence for this relationship. Idiosyncratic output fluctuations account for the majority of cross country consumption growth variability, but trends in tax differentials are informative about the dynamic evolution of international risk sharing. In particular, adjusting for ...
The Impact of Tax Differences on Intrafirm Patent Transactions
An analysis of global patent transfers found that international tax differences impact patent transactions between parent companies and foreign subsidiaries.
Journal Article
Did the Fiscal Stimulus Work?
Billions were spent to recover from the Great Recession. How can we know whether taxpayers got a decent bang for the buck? More than seven years after the enactment of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, economists, legislators, and the American people continue to debate the effectiveness of the measure. The largest U.S. fiscal stimulus since the 1930s, the Recovery Act pumped hundreds of billions of dollars of federal spending and tax cuts into the economy in an effort to stem the massive job losses and steep drop in economic output that characterized the Great Recession. The ...
Tax, transfer programs explain why Western Europeans work less than Americans
Western Europe differs from the United States not only in consumption tax, income tax and social security systems but also in the total factor productivity—a measure of productivity—for market production in which most European countries are low.
Journal Article
A Taxing Question for the Fed
The Fed has long emphasized uncertainty in assessing the economic effects of tax cuts. Both history and theory might help explain why
Working Paper
What Do Survey Data Tell Us about US Businesses?
This paper examines the reliability of survey data on business incomes, valuations, and rates of return, which are key inputs for studies of wealth inequality and entrepreneurial choice. We compare survey responses of business owners with available data from administrative tax records, brokered private business sales, and publicly traded company filings and document problems due to nonrepresentative samples and measurement errors across several surveys, subsamples, and years. We find that the discrepancies are economically relevant for the statistics of interest. We investigate reasons for ...
Journal Article
Taxes and the Fed
Working Paper
Taxes, Subsidies, and Gender Gaps in Hours and Wages
Using micro data from 17 countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, this paper documents a negative cross-country correlation between gender ratios in market hours and wages. We find that market hours by women and the size of the service sector that produces close substitutes to home production are important for the gender differences in market hours across countries. We quantify the role played by taxes and subsidies to family care on the two gender ratios in a multisector model with home production. Higher taxes and lower subsidies reduce the marketization of ...