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...

We provide new evidence that cash transfers following the birth of a first child can have large and long-lasting effects on that child's outcomes. We take advantage of the January 1 birthdate cutoff for U.S. child-related tax benefits, which results in families of otherwise similar children...

Although improving psychological well-being was not the explicit focus of the 2021 expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC), psychological health outcomes may have been affected by the positive income shocks generated by the credit. In this chapter we ask: How did the 2021 expanded CTC affect parents'...

This paper characterizes the optimal taxation of top earners in a world with externalities. It takes a reduced-form approach that spans a broad class of models where top earners create externalities on the economy. The model allows for a flexible relationship between top earnings and the...

We study the persistent effects of temporary changes in U.S. federal corporate and personal income tax rates using a narrative identification approach. A corporate income tax cut leads to a sustained increase in GDP and productivity, with peak effects between five and eight years. R&D spending...

Evidence that high tax rates significantly depress capital gains realizations is inconsistent with the implications of neoclassical investment models in unchanging economic environments. Higher tax rates reduce after-tax investment returns, thereby encouraging investors to sell capital assets...

Budget set kinks are much studied in economics, including in the context of "bunching" estimators that assume individuals react to the true marginal tax rate. We document that individuals disproportionately "left-bunch" below kinks in the context of the Social Security Earnings Test where...