In this paper, I review and assess what we have learned about what motivates individuals to
pay–or to not pay–their legally due tax liabilities. I focus on three specific questions. First …

This paper critically surveys the large and growing literature estimating the elasticity of
taxable income with respect to marginal tax rates using tax return data. First, we provide a …

Artificial intelligence (AI) and reinforcement learning (RL) have improved many areas but are
not yet widely adopted in economic policy design, mechanism design, or economics at …

A common objection to “sin taxes”—corrective taxes on goods that are thought to be
overconsumed, such as cigarettes, alcohol, and sugary drinks—is that they often fall …

This article 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 patented …

Tackling real-world socio-economic challenges requires designing and testing economic
policies. However, this is hard in practice, due to a lack of appropriate (micro-level) …

We develop new tools for estimating the causal effects of treatments or instruments that
combine multiple sources of variation according to a known formula. Examples include …

This paper provides evidence that prices respond significantly more strongly to increases
than to decreases in value-added taxes (VATs). First, using two plausibly exogenous VAT …

We examine the effect of the EITC on the poverty and income of single mothers with children
using a quasi-experimental approach that leverages variation in generosity due to policy …

In this paper, I assess what we have learned about tax evasion since Michael Allingham and
Agnar Sandmo launched the modern analysis of tax evasion in 1972. I focus on three …