We provide estimates of the impact and long-run elasticities of tax base with respect to tax rates for four large U.S. cities: Houston (property taxation), Minneapolis (property taxation), New York City (property, general sales, and income taxation), and Philadelphia (property, gross receipts,...

This paper addresses the fundamental question of whether, in a comparative-advantage context, the gains from trade will be greater when the differences between trading countries are greater. Such a presumption is established. The paper then discusses circumstances that could cause the...

The recent public debt crisis in most developed economies implies an urgent need for increasing tax revenues or cutting government spending. In this paper we study the importance of household heterogeneity and the progressivity of the labor income tax schedule for the ability of the government...

How much additional tax revenue can the government generate by increasing labor income taxes? In this paper we provide a quantitative answer to this question, and study the importance of the progressivity of the tax schedule for the ability of the government to generate tax revenues. We develop...

In finite samples, the use of a slightly endogenous but highly relevant instrument can reduce mean-squared error (MSE). Building on this observation, I propose a moment selection criterion for GMM in which moment conditions are chosen based on the MSE of their associated estimators rather than...

This paper discusses methods for evaluating the impacts of social programs prior to their implementation. Ex ante evaluation is useful for designing programs that achieve some optimality criteria, such as maximizing impact for a given cost. This paper illustrates through several examples the use...

This paper discusses the use of discrete choice dynamic programming (DCDP) methods for evaluating policies of particular relevance to developing countries, such as policies to reduce child labor and increase school attendance, to improve school quality, to affect immigration flows, to expand old...

In finite samples, the use of a slightly endogenous but highly relevant instrument can reduce mean-squared error (MSE). Building on this observation, I propose a moment selection criterion for GMM in which moment conditions are chosen based on the MSE of their associated estimators rather than...

This paper investigates the problem of testing conditional independence of Y and Z given λθ(X) for some unknown θ ∈ Θ ⊂ Rd, for a parametric function λθ(•). For instance, such a problem is relevant in recent literatures of heterogeneous treatment effects and contract theory. First,...

This paper proposes an asymptotically optimal specification test of single-index models against alternatives that lead to inconsistent estimates of a covariate’s average partial effect. The proposed tests are relevant when a researcher is concerned about a potential violation of the...