This paper rethinks the design of the income tax by assuming that the objective of the tax is not to redistribute from rich to poor but instead to provide some insurance to individuals against the uncertainties they face in their future earnings, a motivation for the tax proposed in Buchanan...

This paper investigates whether and why pensioners move across borders in response to tax rate differentials. In 2013, retirees relocating to Portugal became eligible to a full tax exemption of foreign-source pensions. Contrary to the broadly held belief that seniors "age in place", we find...

We study a French wealth tax reform that starkly reduced the information some taxpayers must report to the tax authority. Using a new dynamic bunching approach we estimate the average response to the reform, the share of compliers, and the local average treatment effect. The annual wealth growth...

This paper quantifies the unequal welfare effects of tax competition. I derive the optimal tax and transfer schedules in a free mobility union composed of countries that can either compete or set a uniform federal tax rate. In the absence of fiscal coordination, governments internalize that any...

The 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act reduced the US corporate tax rate and introduced provisions to curb profit shifting. We combine survey data, tax data, and firm financial statements to study the evolution of the geographical allocation of US firms' profits after the reform. The share of profits...

We study the impacts of a policy designed to reward mothers who stay at home rather than join the labor force when their children are under age three. We use regional and over time variation to show that the Finnish Home Care Allowance (HCA) decreases maternal employment in both the short and...

This paper studies how and why households adjust their spending, saving, and borrowing in response to transitory income shocks. We leverage new large-scale survey data to first quantitatively assess households' intertemporal marginal propensities to consume (MPCs) and deleverage (MPDs) (the...

This paper compares the impact of long term care (LTC) risk on single and married households and studies the roles played by informal care (IC), consumption sharing within households, and Medicaid in insuring this risk. We develop a life-cycle model where individuals face survival and health...

This paper examines the multigenerational impact of children and whether the public provision of formal childcare lessens the earnings and employment impacts of children. We find that the arrival of a firstborn reduces employment and earnings of mothers and employment of grandmothers. Studying a...

Children represent the largest indirect beneficiaries of the U.S. social welfare system. Yet, many questions remain about the direct benefits of cash aid to children. The current understanding of the impacts of cash aid in the U.S. is drawn primarily from studies of in-kind benefits, tax...