Publications

SSRN

15 Apr 2015
Research & Ideas

Why Americans Voted for an Income Tax

rich. We ask the highest earners among us to pay a greater share of their income than the rest of us. But, despite the well-known fact that inequality in incomes is now at levels not seen since FDR's time,... View Details

Keywords: by Matthew C. Weinzierl

2021
Article

Designing, Not Checking, for Policy Robustness: An Example with Optimal Taxation

By: Benjamin B. Lockwood, Afras Sial and Matthew C. Weinzierl

Economists typically check the robustness of their results by comparing them across plausible ranges of parameter values and model structures. A preferable approach to robustness—for the purposes of policymaking and evaluation—is to design policy that takes these... View Details

Keywords: Optimal Taxation; Income Tax; Social Welfare; Elasticity; Income; Taxation; Policy

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22 Jun 2011
Working Paper Summaries

The Surprising Power of Age-Dependent Taxes

Keywords: by Matthew Weinzierl

January 2013
Article

Preference Heterogeneity and Optimal Capital Income Taxation

By: Mikhail Golosov, Maxim Troshkin, Aleh Tsyvinski and Matthew Weinzierl

We examine a prominent justification for capital income taxation: goods preferred by those with high ability ought to be taxed. In an environment where commodity taxes are allowed to be nonlinear functions of income and consumption, we derive an analytical expression... View Details

Keywords: Taxation

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February 2022
Article

Taxation and Innovation in the 20th Century

By: Ufuk Akcigit, John Grigsby, Tom Nicholas and Stefanie Stantcheva

This paper studies the effect of corporate and personal taxes on innovation in the United States over the twentieth century. We build a panel of the universe of inventors who patent since 1920, and a historical state-level corporate tax database with corporate tax... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Income Taxes; Corporate Taxation; Firms; Inventors; State Taxation; Business Taxation; R＆D Tax Credits; Taxation; Innovation and Invention; History; United States

29 Jun 2012
Working Paper Summaries

Trade Credit and Taxes

Keywords: by Mihir A. Desai, C. Fritz Foley & James R. Hines

October 2011
Article

The Surprising Power of Age-Dependent Taxes

By: Matthew C. Weinzierl

This article provides a new, empirically driven application of the dynamic Mirrleesian framework by studying a feasible and potentially powerful tax reform: age-dependent labor income taxation. I show analytically how age dependence improves policy on both the... View Details

Keywords: Taxation; Policy; Age; Income; Mathematical Methods; Welfare; United States

30 Apr 2007
Research & Ideas

All Eyes on Slovakia’s Flat Tax

it aim to do, and why can it be controversial? Vincent Dessain: A flat tax is as an income tax; it basically applies the same rate of tax to... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

20 Dec 2006
Op-Ed

Investors Hurt by Dual-Track Tax Reporting

change would save the considerable resources now dedicated to dual-reporting system compliance and allow for a lower marginal rate. Rough estimates are that a 15 percent tax on reported GAAP profits would be... View Details

Keywords: by Mihir Desai

2009
Working Paper

The Impact of Private Equity Ownership on Portfolio Firms' Corporate Tax Planning

By: Brad Badertscher, Sharon P. Katz and Sonja Olhoft Rego

This study investigates whether private equity (PE) firms influence the tax practices of their portfolio firms. Prior research documents that PE firms create economic value in portfolio firms through effective governance, financial, and operational engineering. Given... View Details

Keywords: Private Equity; Investment Portfolio; Corporate Governance; Taxation; Ownership Stake; Value Creation

25 Jan 2012
News

Is Tax Reform Viable?

face of it, it’s hard to understand the logic of earned income being taxed at about two and a half times the rate of a capital gain. My first thought was of the advice of... View Details

Keywords: Administration of Economic Programs; Government

01 Mar 2014
News

Ask the Expert: Taxing Questions

1960), former chief economist, Royal Bank of Canada, Canada The United States has the worst of all worlds: a relatively high marginal tax rate that influences behavior... View Details

Keywords: ask the expert; Finance

24 Oct 2017
Research & Ideas

Tax Reform is on the Front Burner Again. Here’s Why You Should Care

of the current seven individual tax brackets with three brackets, with rates at 12 percent, 25 percent, and 35 percent. A 20 percent corporate tax rate, down from 39.1 percent.... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

Article

Optimal Taxation in Theory and Practice

By: N. Gregory Mankiw, Matthew C. Weinzierl and Danny Yagan

We highlight and explain eight lessons from optimal tax theory and compare them to the last few decades of OECD tax policy. As recommended by theory, top marginal income tax rates have declined, marginal income tax schedules have flattened, redistribution has risen... View Details

Keywords: Taxation; Theory; Practice; Policy

2020
Working Paper

Designing, Not Checking, for Policy Robustness: An Example with Optimal Taxation

By: Benjami Lockwood, Afras Y. Sial and Matthew C. Weinzierl

Economists typically check the robustness of their results by comparing them across plausible ranges of parameter values and model structures. A preferable approach to robustness—for the purposes of policymaking and evaluation—is to design policy that takes these... View Details

Keywords: Optimal Taxation; Robust Optimization; Taxation; Income; Policy; Design

19 Aug 2009
Working Paper Summaries

Optimal Taxation in Theory and Practice

Keywords: by N. Gregory Mankiw, Matthew Weinzierl & Danny Yagan

Article

De Gustibus non est Taxandum: Heterogeneity in Preferences and Optimal Redistribution

By: Benjamin B Lockwood and Matthew Weinzierl

The prominent but unproven intuition that preference heterogeneity reduces redistribution in a standard optimal tax model is shown to hold under the plausible condition that the distribution of preferences for consumption relative to leisure rises, in terms of... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Income; Decision Choices and Conditions; Consumer Behavior; Taxation; Microeconomics; Macroeconomics

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2012
Working Paper

~Why Do We Redistribute so Much but Tag so Little? Normative Diversity, Equal Sacrifice and Optimal Taxation

By: Matthew Weinzierl

Tagging is a free lunch in conventional optimal tax theory because it eases the classic tradeoff between efficiency and equality. But tagging is used in only limited ways in tax policy. I propose one explanation: conventional optimal tax theory has yet to capture the... View Details

Keywords: Forecasting and Prediction; Cost; Framework; Policy; Taxation; Analytics and Data Science; Performance Efficiency; United States