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- Faculty Publications (88)
Show Results For
- All HBS Web (396)
- Faculty Publications (88)
- October 2014
- Article
The Promise of Positive Optimal Taxation: Normative Diversity and a Role for Equal Sacrifice
A prominent assumption in modern optimal tax research is that the objective of taxation is Utilitarian. I present new survey evidence that most people disagree with this assumption, preferring tax policies based at least in part on a classic alternative objective: the... View Details
Weinzierl, Matthew. "The Promise of Positive Optimal Taxation: Normative Diversity and a Role for Equal Sacrifice." Journal of Public Economics 118 (October 2014): 128–142. (Also NBER Working Paper Series, No. 18599.)
- 17 Oct 2024
- Research & Ideas
The Reputation Risks of Sharing Fake News
political party look if it were true. Study participants expected to boost their reputations by sharing information: Considered accurate. Participants expected sharing true headlines to make them look better than sharing false or... View Details
Keywords: by Avery Forman
- 25 Apr 2017
- First Look
First Look at New Research, April 25
people prefer the action that saves more lives, despite its being more aversive. Our findings shed light on the formation of moral judgment under normative conflict, the conditions for preference reversal,... View Details
Keywords: Sean Silverthorne
- 2021
- Article
To Thine Own Self Be True? Incentive Problems in Personalized Law
By: Jordan M. Barry, John William Hatfield and Scott Duke Kominers
Recent years have seen an explosion of scholarship on “personalized law.” Commentators foresee a world in which regulators armed with big data and machine learning techniques determine the optimal legal rule for every regulated party, then instantaneously disseminate... View Details
Keywords: Personalized Law; Regulation; Regulatory Avoidance; Regulatory Arbitrage; Law And Economics; Law And Technology; Law And Artificial Intelligence; Futurism; Moral Hazard; Elicitation; Signaling; Privacy; Law; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Information Technology; AI and Machine Learning
Barry, Jordan M., John William Hatfield, and Scott Duke Kominers. "To Thine Own Self Be True? Incentive Problems in Personalized Law." Art. 2. William & Mary Law Review 62, no. 3 (2021).
- November 2020
- Article
Taxation in Matching Markets
By: Arnaud Dupuy, Alfred Galichon, Sonia Jaffe and Scott Duke Kominers
We analyze the effects of taxation in two-sided matching markets, i.e., markets in which all agents have heterogeneous preferences over potential partners. In matching markets, taxes can generate inefficiency on the allocative margin by changing who is matched to whom,... View Details
Dupuy, Arnaud, Alfred Galichon, Sonia Jaffe, and Scott Duke Kominers. "Taxation in Matching Markets." International Economic Review 61, no. 4 (November 2020): 1591–1634.
- 08 Jul 2009
- Working Paper Summaries
Truth in Giving: Experimental Evidence on the Welfare Effects of Informed Giving to the Poor
Keywords: by Christina Fong & Felix Oberholzer-Gee
- November 2024
- Article
On the Representativeness of Voter Turnout
By: Louis Kaplow and Scott Duke Kominers
Prominent theory research on voting analyzes a variety of models in which expected pivotality drives voters' turnout decisions and hence determines voting outcomes. It is recognized, however, that such work is at odds with Downs's paradox: in practice, many... View Details
Keywords: Voting Behavior; Voting Turnout; Paradox Of Voting; Pivotality; Elections; Model; Theory; Governance Transparency; Government; Democracy; Turnout; Voting; Governance; Government and Politics; Public Sector; Political Elections
Kaplow, Louis, and Scott Duke Kominers. "On the Representativeness of Voter Turnout." Journal of Law & Economics 67, no. 4 (November 2024): 879–904.
- 20 Jan 2017
- Research & Ideas
Here’s How Businessman Trump Is Likely to Approach the Presidency
Donald J. Trump brings business experience to the White House. Source: BasSlabbers Donald John Trump, the 45th president of the United States, will be the first to go straight from the boardroom to the Oval Office without any political... View Details
Keywords: by Christina Pazzanese
- 2016
- Working Paper
Popular Acceptance of Inequality Due to Innate Brute Luck and Support for Classical Benefit-Based Taxation
U.S. survey respondents' views on distributive justice are shown to differ in two specific, related ways from what is conventionally assumed in modern optimal tax research. A large share of respondents, and in some cases a large majority, resist the full equalization... View Details
Weinzierl, Matthew C. "Popular Acceptance of Inequality Due to Innate Brute Luck and Support for Classical Benefit-Based Taxation." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 16-104, March 2016. (Revised July 2016. Also NBER Working Paper Series, No. 22462, July 2016. Also see Notes on Fortune article. Accepted for publication by the Journal of Public Economics.)
- 2019
- Working Paper
Fiscal Rules and Sovereign Default
By: Laura Alfaro and Fabio Kanczuk
Recurrent concerns over debt sustainability in emerging and developed nations have prompted renewed debate on the role of fiscal rules. Their optimality, however, remains unclear. We provide a quantitative analysis of fiscal rules in a standard model of sovereign debt... View Details
Alfaro, Laura, and Fabio Kanczuk. "Fiscal Rules and Sovereign Default." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 16-134, June 2016. (Also NBER Working Paper w23370. Revised January 2019.)
- 11 Feb 2015
- Research & Ideas
Politicians Benefited From Using Toxic Loans
politicians get fooled into engaging in risky transactions, or did they take the risks knowingly, opting for the short-term benefits in spite of the risks?" Vallée recently tackled that question in the paper The Political Economy of... View Details
- 2005
- Article
Early Decisions: A Regulatory Framework
By: John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson and Brigitte C. Madrian
We describe a regulatory framework that helps consumers who have difficulty sticking to their own long-run plans. Early Decision regulations help long-run preferences prevail by allowing consumers to partially commit to their long-run goals, making it harder for a... View Details
Beshears, John, James J. Choi, David Laibson, and Brigitte C. Madrian. "Early Decisions: A Regulatory Framework." Swedish Economic Policy Review 12, no. 2 (2005): 41–60.
- September 2009
- Article
Finance and Politics: A Review Essay Based on Kenneth Dam's Analysis of Legal Traditions in The Law-Growth Nexus
By: Mark J. Roe and Jordan I. Siegel
Strong financial markets are widely thought to propel economic development, with many in finance seeing legal tradition as fundamental to protecting investors sufficiently for finance to flourish. Kenneth Dam finds that the legal tradition view inaccurately portrays... View Details
Keywords: Financial Development; Economic Development; Kenneth Dam; Finance; Government and Politics; Information; Law
Roe, Mark J., and Jordan I. Siegel. "Finance and Politics: A Review Essay Based on Kenneth Dam's Analysis of Legal Traditions in The Law-Growth Nexus." Journal of Economic Literature 47, no. 3 (September 2009): 781–800. (Strong financial markets are widely thought to propel economic development, with many in finance seeing legal tradition as fundamental to protecting investors sufficiently for finance to flourish. Kenneth Dam finds that the legal tradition view inaccurately portrays how legal systems work, how laws developed historically, and how government power is allocated in the various legal traditions. Yet, after probing the legal origins' literature for inaccuracies, Dam does not deeply develop an alternative hypothesis to explain the world's differences in financial development. Nor does he challenge the origins core data, which could be origins' trump card. Hence, his analysis will not convince many economists, despite that his legal learning suggests conceptual and factual difficulties for the legal origins explanations. Yet, a dense political economy explanation is already out there and the origins-based data has unexplored weaknesses consistent with Dam's contentions. Knowing if the origins view is truly fundamental, flawed, or secondary is vital for financial development policy making because policymakers who believe it will pick policies that imitate what they think to be the core institutions of the preferred legal tradition. But if they have mistaken views, as Dam indicates they might, as to what the legal traditions' institutions really are and which types of laws are effective, or what is really most important to financial development, they will make policy mistakes—potentially serious ones.)
- 08 Mar 2021
- Blog Post
International Women's Day Featured Stories
International Women's Day (IWD) celebrates the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women. It is an official holiday in at least 20 countries and grows in recognition each year. This year’s IWD theme is Choose to... View Details
- Article
An Integrated Decision-Making Approach for Improving European Air Traffic Management
By: Yael Grushka-Cockayne, Bert De Reyck and Zeger Degraeve
We develop a multistakeholder, multicriteria decision-making framework for Eurocontrol, the European air traffic management organization, for evaluating and selecting operational improvements to the air traffic management system. The selected set of improvements will... View Details
Keywords: Decision Making; Framework; Operations; Performance Improvement; Government Administration; Air Transportation Industry; Europe
Grushka-Cockayne, Yael, Bert De Reyck, and Zeger Degraeve. "An Integrated Decision-Making Approach for Improving European Air Traffic Management." Management Science 54, no. 8 (August 2008): 1395–1409.
- Research Summary
Overview
Professor Sawyer’s research focuses on U.S. political economy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, concentrating on the development of competition policy and the administrative state. While the conventional history of U.S. competition policy portrays the... View Details
- 05 Apr 2011
- First Look
First Look: April 5
and operations theory suggests that the longer people wait, the less satisfied they become; we demonstrate that due to what we term the labor illusion, when websites engage in operational transparency by signaling that they are exerting effort, people can actually... View Details
Keywords: Sean Silverthorne
- 05 Jul 2006
- First Look
First Look: July 5, 2006
Working PapersThe Framing Effect of Price Format Marco Bertini and Luc Wathieu Existing evidence suggests that preferences are affected by whether a price is presented as one all-inclusive expense or partitioned into a series of... View Details
Keywords: Sean Silverthorne
- 08 Jun 2015
- Working Paper Summaries
Physician Beliefs and Patient Preferences: A New Look at Regional Variation in Health Care Spending
- 1998
- Working Paper
Some Evidence on the Optimal Welfare State Based on Subjective Data
By: Rafael Di Tella and Robert MacCulloch
It is often difficult to evaluate all the costs and benefits of the welfare state. This paper suggests an alternative approach based on surveys of citizen satisfaction with welfare programs. In the first part of the paper we estimate the level of unemployment benefits... View Details