JMP1: Preferences for Taxing Personal Characteristics
(with Julien Senn)
Paper
While tagging—the conditioning of taxes on personal characteristics correlated with earning ability—can improve efficiency, it is often assumed to lack political support because it violates horizontal equity, which stipulates treating equals equally. To empirically test this view, we conducted an online vignette experiment with a U.S. general population sample (N = 3,012) and report three results that challenge it. First, support for tagging varies substantially across tags and individuals. Consistent with theoretical prescriptions, it is higher for characteristics with a strong correlation with ability or reflecting needs. However, the immutability of a tag does not predict support, contrary to theory. Second, variation in support reflects both horizontal and vertical equity concerns. Third, other considerations, such as efficiency, also matter but less so. Incorporating fairness can either limit or amplify optimal tagging relative to a canonical utilitarian benchmark. Finally, we compare our results with the tags used in the U.S. tax code and those discussed in the literature.
JMP2: Who Should Get Money? Estimating Welfare Weights in the U.S.
(with Francesco Capozza)
Reject and Resubmit at the American Economic Review
Awards: Distinguished CESifo affiliate award for best paper in Public Economics 2024
Paper
Evaluating the desirability of a reform typically involves weighing the gains of winners against the losses of losers using welfare weights, which measure the value that society places on a $1 increase in an individual's consumption. They can capture various normative ideals like utilitarianism and equality of opportunity. We elicit the welfare weights of the U.S. general population using experiments and show their robustness, validity, and temporal stability. We estimate an income elasticity of welfare weights between -0.78 and -0.70, which is roughly 5-9 times more progressive than the weights implied by U.S. tax and transfer policies. The optimal marginal tax rates based on our estimates of welfare weights are 28-30 percentage points higher, on average, than the current tax rates in the U.S.
Fair (P)redistribution
(with Justin Valasek and
Weijia Wang )
Reject and Resubmit at the Journal of Public Economics
Paper (old version)
Science by Consensus: Eliciting Citizens' and Experts' R&D Spending Priorities
(with Francesco Capozza and
Mattie Toma)
Paper
Policy brief
Paternalism: Determinants of Demand and Supply
(with Björn Bartling )
Paper
Understanding Administrative Burden: A Field Experiment on the Hassle Costs of Tax Filing in Germany
(with Manuel Grieder,
Emanuel Hansen, and
Michael Kurschilgen)
How and When are Externalities Mitigated?
(with Max Müller,
Charlie Rafkin, and
Christopher Roth)