Many studies have estimated the effect of taxes on taxable income. To account for nonlinear taxes these studies either use instrumental variables approaches that are not fully consistent or impose strong functional form assumptions. None allow for general heterogeneity in preferences. In this...

Often semiparametric estimators are asymptotically equivalent to a sample average. The object being averaged is referred to as the influence function. The influence function is useful in formulating primitive regularity conditions for asymptotic normality, in efficiency comparions, for bias...

Given the key role of the taxable income elasticity in designing an optimal tax system there are many studies attempting to estimate this elasticity. To account for nonlinear taxes these studies either use instrumental variables approaches that are not fully consistent, or impose strong...

This paper shows how to construct locally robust semiparametric GMM estimators, meaning equivalently moment conditions have zero derivative with respect to the first step and the first step does not affect the asymptotic variance. They are constructed by adding to the moment functions the...

There are many economic parameters that depend on nonparametric first steps. Examples include games, dynamic discrete choice, average consumer surplus, and treatment effects. Often estimators of these parameters are asymptotically equivalent to a sample average of an object referred to as the...

The taxable income elasticity is a key parameter for predicting the e?ect of tax reform or designing an income tax. Bunching at kinks and notches in a single budget set have been used to estimate the taxable income elasticity. We show that when the heterogeneity distribution is unrestricted the...

There are many economic parameters that depend on nonparametric first steps. Examples include games, dynamic discrete choice, average exact consumer surplus, and treatment effects. Often estimators of these parameters are asymptotically equivalent to a sample average of an object referred to as...

We give a general construction of debiased/locally robust/orthogonal (LR) moment functions for GMM, where the derivative with respect to first step nonparametric estimation is zero and equivalently first step estimation has no effect on the influence function. This construction consists of...