People's money
Lauren Cohen, Joshua Coval & Christopher Malloy
Harvard Working Paper, November 2013
Abstract:
Much like states that rely on government spending, certain firms rely on the government for a substantial share of their revenues. Exploiting the statutory requirement that forces firms to list the identities of their major customers, we identify and examine the set of firms whose major customers are listed as government entities. We employ an identification strategy that exploits government contract bid protests in order to identify the causal impact of government sales on future firm outcomes, and find that government-linked firms invest less in physical and intellectual capital, and have lower future sales growth.
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Why Has U.S. Policy Uncertainty Risen Since 1960?
Scott Baker et al.
NBER Working Paper, January 2014
Abstract:
There appears to be a strong upward drift in policy-related economic uncertainty after 1960. We consider two classes of explanations for this rise. The first stresses growth in government spending, taxes, and regulation. A second stresses increased political polarization and its implications for the policy-making process and policy choices. While the evidence is inconclusive, it suggests that both factors play a role in driving the secular increase in policy uncertainty over the last half century.
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Eliciting Taxpayer Preferences Increases Tax Compliance
Cait Poynor Lamberton, Jan-Emmanuel De Neve & Michael Norton
Harvard Working Paper, December 2013
Abstract:
Two experiments show that eliciting taxpayer preferences on government spending -- providing tax agency -- increases tax compliance. We first create an income and taxation environment in a laboratory setting to test for compliance with a "lab tax.'' Allowing a treatment group to express non-binding preferences over tax spending priorities leads to a 16% increase in tax compliance. A follow-up online study tests this treatment with a simulation of paying US federal taxes. Allowing taxpayers to signal their preferences on the distribution of government spending results in a 15% reduction in the stated take-up rate of a questionable tax loophole. Providing tax agency recouples tax payments with the public services obtained in return, reduces general anti-tax sentiment, and holds satisfaction with tax payment stable despite increased compliance with tax dues. With tax noncompliance costing the US government $385 billion annually, providing tax agency could have meaningful economic impact. At the same time, giving taxpayers a voice may act as a two-way "nudge," transforming tax payment from a passive experience to a channel of communication between taxpayers and government.
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Adam Isen
Journal of Public Economics, February 2014, Pages 57–73
Abstract:
Numerous theories posit that the fiscal decisions of one jurisdiction influence the fiscal decisions of its neighbors. The main contribution of this paper is to address empirical difficulties in testing for spillovers using a regression discontinuity design on a newly collected dataset. I utilize close elections from this large dataset of local referenda in Ohio to isolate the effect of exogenous increases in taxation and spending of one jurisdiction on neighbors’ fiscal decisions. For all jurisdictional types and referenda revenue sources (bonds, income, property, and sales tax), there is no evidence of spillovers, and relatively small effects can be ruled out.
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Surfacing the Submerged State with Operational Transparency in Government Services
Ryan Buell & Michael Norton
Harvard Working Paper, November 2013
Abstract:
As Americans' trust in government nears historic lows, frustration with government performance approaches record highs. One explanation for this trend is that citizens may be unaware of both the services provided by government and the impact of those services on their lives. In an experiment, Boston-area residents interacted with a website that visualizes both service requests submitted by the public (e.g., potholes and broken streetlamps) and efforts by the City of Boston to address them. Some participants observed a count of new, open, and recently closed service requests, while others viewed these requests visualized on an interactive map that included details and images of the work being performed. Residents who experienced this "operational transparency" in government services – seeing the work that government is doing – expressed more positive attitudes toward government and greater support for maintaining or expanding the scale of government programs. The effect of transparency on support for government programs was equivalent to a roughly 20% decline in conservatism on a political ideology scale. We further demonstrate that positive attitudes about government partially mediate the relationship between operational transparency and support for maintaining and expanding government programs. While transparency is customarily trained on elected officials as a means of ethical oversight, our research documents the benefits of increased transparency into the delivery of government services.
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The Output and Welfare Effects of Fiscal Shocks over the Business Cycle
Eric Sims & Jonathan Wolff
NBER Working Paper, December 2013
Abstract:
How does the magnitude of the output response to a change in government spending vary over the business cycle? What are the welfare effects of fiscal shocks? This paper studies the state-dependence of the output and welfare effects of shocks to government purchases in a DSGE model with real and nominal frictions and a rich fiscal financing structure. Both the output multiplier (the change in output for a one dollar change in government spending) and the welfare multiplier (the consumption equivalent change in welfare for the same change in spending) move significantly across states, though movements in the welfare multiplier are quantitatively much larger than for the output multiplier. The output multiplier is high in bad states of the world resulting from negative "supply" shocks and low when bad states result from "demand" shocks. The welfare multiplier displays the opposite pattern -- it tends to be high in demand-driven recessions and low in supply-driven downturns. In an historical simulation based on estimation of the model parameters, the output multiplier is found to be countercyclical and strongly negatively correlated with the welfare multiplier.
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Destination Taxation and Evasion: Evidence from U.S. Inter-State Commodity Flows
William Fox, LeAnn Luna & Georg Schaur
Journal of Accounting and Economics, February 2014, Pages 43–57
Abstract:
Tax evasion has been an important issue in the accounting literature for several decades, but the focus has been on corporate income taxes. We develop a new way to examine tax evasion that focuses on corporate transactions, rather than corporate profits. Specifically, we examine how commodity flows respond to destination sales taxes, allowing for tax evasion as a function of distance between trade partners. After accounting for transportation costs, we find that the effect of taxes decreases as distance increases. This is consistent with the notion that longer distances between trade partners hinder government oversight and increase the likelihood of successful tax evasion. Our results are robust with respect to outliers, strategic neighbor effects, information sharing agreements and other re-specifications. These results are important to policymakers because they evidence the difficulty of enforcing destination taxation in open economies such as U.S. states and the European Union.
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Rebecca Maynard, Laura Tach & Sarah Halpern-Meekin
Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, forthcoming
Abstract:
We build on the robust quantitative literature on behavioral responses to the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) by using in-depth qualitative interviews with 115 EITC recipients to examine how they understand and respond to its incentive structures regarding earnings, marriage, and childbearing. We find that respondents consider their tax refund as a whole, without differentiating the portion from the EITC; as a result, they cannot predict how their EITC refund would change if they altered their labor supply or marital status. Incentives for childbearing are better understood, but are not specific to the EITC; rather, parents respond to a combination of tax deductions and credits as a whole. Respondents would like to maximize their refunds, but most cannot or would not alter their behavior due to structural constraints they face in the labor and marriage markets. Rather than adjust work hours, defer marriage, or have additional children, respondents exhibit a different type of behavioral response to the incentive structure of the EITC: They alter their tax filing status in order to maximize their refunds. They routinely claim zero exemptions and deductions on their W-4s, file their tax returns as head of household rather than as married, and divide children among the tax returns of multiple caregivers. Although some of these behaviors qualify as tax noncompliance, they emerge because the intricacies of the tax code conflict with the complexity and fluidity of finances and family life in low-income households.
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Property Taxes and Their Limits: Evidence from New York City
Andrew Hayashi
Stanford Law & Policy Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
I report evidence from New York City that property assessment caps on small residential properties represent a significant tax benefit that accrues to the most valuable properties and the wealthiest neighborhoods. Moreover, rather than benefiting the long-time homeowners on fixed incomes who are their putative targets, the largest benefits go to the properties that are most likely to have been recently sold and to be located in neighborhoods where cash incomes have increased the most.
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The Fiscal Stress Arising from State and Local Retiree Health Obligations
Byron Lutz & Louise Sheiner
NBER Working Paper, January 2014
Abstract:
A major factor weighing down the long-term finances of state and local governments is the obligation to fund retiree benefits. While state and local government pension obligations have been analyzed in great detail, much less attention has been paid to the costs of the other major retiree benefit provided by these governments: retiree health insurance. The first portion of the paper uses the information contained in the annual actuarial reports for public retiree health plans to reverse engineer the cash flows underlying the liabilities given in the report. Obtaining the cash flows allows us to construct liability estimates which are consistent across governments in terms of the discount rate, actuarial method and assumptions concerning medical cost inflation and mortality. We find that the total unfunded accrued liability of state and local governments for the provision of retiree health care exceeds $1 trillion, or about ⅓ of total state and local government revenue. Relative to pension obligations discounted at the same rate, we find that unfunded retiree health care liabilities are ½ the size of unfunded pension obligations. We also find that using assumptions concerning the growth in health care costs that are arguably more realistic than those employed by most states actually reduces the size of the liability in most cases. Pushing in the opposite direction, we find that using plausibly more realistic mortality assumptions increases the size of liability. The second portion of the paper places retiree health care obligations into context by examining the budget pressures associated with retiree health on a continuing, largely pay-as-you go basis. We find that much of the projected increase in retiree health obligations as a share of revenue is the result of health care cost growth. On average, states could put their retiree health obligations into long-run fiscal balance by contributing an additional ¾ percent of total revenue toward the benefit each year. There is, however, wide variation across the states, with the majority of states requiring little in the way of additional financing, but some states requiring a significantly larger increase.
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WIC Contract Spillover Effects
Rui Huang & Jeffrey Perloff
Review of Industrial Organization, February 2014, Pages 49-71
Abstract:
Under the U.S. Special Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program, the three major infant formula manufacturers compete for WIC supply contracts, state by state. Policy makers have been puzzled by the question of why the contracted WIC price is substantially lower than the retail (non-WIC) price. Our explanation is that winning the WIC contract is extremely valuable to a manufacturer because of a spillover effect: The increased retail shelf-space that is dedicated to the WIC brand and the WIC logo increases non-WIC sales. We identify this effect by showing the variations in market shares of winning and losing firms that follow WIC contract changes. Immediately after the contract change, there is an immediate increase in the market share of the WIC contract winner and an equal drop in the loser’s share because of new WIC purchases. Then, over an extended period, the spillover effect increases the winner’s share and decreases the loser’s share as retailers shift shelf space from the loser to the winner.
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Alleged Tax Competition: The Mysterious Death of Bequest Taxes in Switzerland
Marius Brülhart & Raphaël Parchet
Journal of Public Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Interjurisdictional competition over mobile tax bases is an easily understood mechanism, but actual tax-base elasticities are difficult to estimate. Political pressure for reducing tax rates could therefore be based on erroneous estimates of the mobility of tax bases. We show that tax competition provided the most prominent argument in the policy debates leading to a succession of reforms of bequest taxation by Swiss cantons. Yet, canton-level panel data spanning multiple bequest tax reforms over a 36-year period suggest the relevant tax base, high-income retirees, to be relatively inelastic with respect to tax rates. The alleged pressures of tax competition did not seem in reality to exist.
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Simulating the Elimination of the U.S. Corporate Income Tax
Hans Fehr et al.
NBER Working Paper, December 2013
Abstract:
We simulate corporate tax reform in a single good, five-region (U.S., Europe, Japan, China, India) model, featuring skilled and unskilled labor, detailed region-specific demographics and fiscal policies. Eliminating the model’s U.S. corporate income tax produces rapid and dramatic increases in the model’s level of U.S. investment, output, and real wages, making the tax cut self-financing to a significant extent. Somewhat smaller gains arise from revenue-neutral base broadening, specifically cutting the corporate tax rate to 9 percent and eliminating tax loop-holes.
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Nice Guys Finish Last: Do Honest Taxpayers Face Higher Tax Rates?
Philipp Doerrenberg et al.
Kyklos, February 2014, Pages 29–53
Abstract:
This paper examines the relationship between ‘tax morale’ and tax policy. Using a unique cross-country data set based on the World Values Survey and the World Tax Indicators, we find that income groups with high tax morale face higher average and marginal tax rates. We propose three possible mechanisms which could help to explain our results: i) an inverse elasticity argument where governments seek to minimize distortions, ii) a political economy argument where governments take voting behavior into account, and iii) an administrative costs argument where taxing high morale groups is more cost efficient.
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Tax Evasion and Swiss Bank Deposits
Niels Johannesen
Journal of Public Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Bank deposits in offshore financial centers may be used to evade taxes on interest income. A recent EU reform limits the scope for this type of tax evasion by introducing a withholding tax on interest income earned by EU households in Switzerland and several other offshore centers. This paper estimates the impact of the withholding tax on Swiss bank deposits held by EU residents while using non-EU residents who were not subject to the tax as a comparison group. We present evidence that Swiss bank deposits owned by EU residents declined by 30-40% relative to other Swiss bank deposits in two quarters immediately before and after the tax was introduced. We also present evidence suggesting that the drop in Swiss bank deposits was driven by behavioral responses aiming to escape the tax - such as the transfer of funds to bank accounts in other offshore centers and the transfer of formal ownership of Swiss bank accounts to offshore holding companies - rather than repatriation of funds.
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Brian Baugh, Itzhak Ben-David & Hoonsuk Park
NBER Working Paper, January 2014
Abstract:
We explore household consumption surrounding federal tax returns filings and refunds receipt to test various theories of consumption. Because uncertainty regarding the refund is resolved at filing, precautionary savings theory predicts an increase in consumption at this date. Contrary to this prediction, we find that households generally do not increase consumption at filing. Following the receipt of the refunds, consumption of both durables and nondurables increases dramatically and then decays quickly. Our results show that households, on average, are financially constrained, exhibit myopic behavior, and do not respond to precautionary savings motives.
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The Impact of Sales Tax on Internet and Catalog Sales: Evidence from a Natural Experiment
Yu Jeffrey Hu & Zhulei Tang
International Journal of Industrial Organization, January 2014, Pages 84–90
Abstract:
This paper studies the effect of sales tax changes on internet and catalog sales. We collect sales data from a retailer that sells its products through its internet and catalog channels. We analyze the retailer’s sales before and after a major tax cut in one of the largest metropolitan areas in the U.S. This natural experiment allows us to separate the effect of the tax cut from the effect of other confounding factors. The results from our panel data analyses indicate that remote sales have decreased by about 15 percent in response to a four percentage point decrease in sales tax. Our results are statistically significant and highly robust. Interestingly, we also find that the effect of the tax cut varies across different types of consumers, products, and channels. These findings have important managerial and public policy implications.
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Rearmament to the Rescue? New Estimates of the Impact of “Keynesian” Policies in 1930s' Britain
Nicholas Crafts & Terence Mills
Journal of Economic History, December 2013, Pages 1077-1104
Abstract:
We report estimates of the fiscal multiplier for interwar Britain based on quarterly data, time-series econometrics, and “defense news.” We find that the government expenditure multiplier was in the range 0.3 to 0.8, much lower than previous estimates. The scope for a Keynesian solution to recession was less than is generally supposed. We find that rearmament gave a smaller boost to real GDP than previously claimed. Rearmament may, however, have had a larger impact than a temporary public works program of similar magnitude if private investment anticipated the need to add capacity to cope with future defense spending.
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The Effect of Government Corruption on the Efficiency of U.S. Commercial Airports
Jia Yan & Tae Hoon Oum
Journal of Urban Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
In this paper, we argue that the cost of providing public goods is affected by local government corruption because bureaucrats have no strong incentives to pursue mandated tasks under a corrupt environment. Commercial airports in the United States are chosen to demonstrate such impacts of corruption. We first develop a theory which predicts the impacts of corruption on productivity and variable input allocation of airports. We then test the predictions by estimating a stochastic variable cost frontier model which incorporates both technical and allocative efficiency of airports. The empirical evidence confirms the theoretical predictions by revealing the following: 1) airports are less productive in more corrupt environments; and 2) airports tend to use more contracting-out to replace in-house labor in more corrupt environments. The findings can be applied to the context of other public goods and have important policy implications for reforming governance structure of public good provision.
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Flip the Switch: The Spatial Impact of the Rural Electrification Administration 1935-1940
Carl Kitchens & Price Fishback
NBER Working Paper, December 2013
Abstract:
To isolate the impact of access to electricity on local economies, we examine the impact of the Rural Electrification Administration low-interest loans in the 1930s. The REA provided loans to cooperatives to lay distribution lines to farms and aid in wiring homes. Consequently, the number of rural farm homes electrified doubled in the United States within 5 years. We develop a panel data set for the 1930s and use changes within counties over time to identify the effect of the REA loans on a wide range of socio-economic measures. The REA loans contributed significantly to increases in crop output and crop productivity and helped stave off declines in overall farm output, productivity, and land values, but had much smaller effects on nonagricultural parts of the economy. The ex-ante subsidy from the low interest loans was large, but after the program was completed, nearly all of the loans were fully repaid, and the ultimate cost to the taxpayer was relatively low.