In 1991 the Ethiopian Revolution Democratic Front (EPRDF) toppled the old ‘socialist’ regime that had ruled the country for seventeen years. In contrast to the previous policy regime of hard control, EPRDF initiated a wide range of reforms that covered not only the tax system but also the...

We argue the revenue potential from increasing tax rates on capital gains may be substantially greater than previously understood. First, many prior studies focus primarily on short-run taxpayer responses, and so miss revenue from gains that are deferred when rates change. Second, the...

This paper examines the effects of estate tax repeal on charitable giving. Using data from a variety of sources, we conclude that outright repeal would reduce giving at death by about $5 billion per year, and giving during life by a similar amount. The resulting decline in giving, $10 billion...

This paper analyzes optimal pre-announced capital and labor income tax reforms under valuable and productive government spending. Our baseline optimal reform reveals that these model ingredients result in a reduction of welfare losses that occur when the reform is announced before its...

We evaluate the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Combining reduced-form estimates from tax data with a global investment model, we estimate responses, identify parameters, and conduct counterfactuals. Domestic investment of firms with the mean tax change increases 20% versus a no-change baseline. Due...

This paper estimates the effect of a temporary and large (21 p.p.) value-added tax (VAT) cut along with anti-profiteering measures on food necessities during a period of high inflation in Argentina. Using barcode-level data across more than 3,000 supermarkets, we find that (1) absent the...

Die von der Bundesregierung geplante Steuerreform soll die Wettbewerbsfähigkeit deutscher Unternehmen stärken und den Standort Deutschland für in- und ausländische Investoren attraktiver machen. Berechnungen des ZEW und der Universität Mannheim zeigen indessen: Die Steuerentlastung der...

In this paper we use a panel of 189 countries to describe the salient trends that have emerged in national personal income tax systems spanning the twenty five year period from 1981 to 2005. Using complete national income tax schedules, we calculate actual average and marginal tax rates at...

This paper explores how revenue-neutral tax reforms impact employment and economic growth in a model of endogenous growth and search frictions on the labor market. We analyze how savings and the incentive to create new jobs are affected by tax swaps between wage income taxes, payroll taxes,...

This paper explores how revenue-neutral tax reforms impact employment and economic growth in models of exogenous and endogenous growth and search frictions on the labor market. We show that (i) a cut in the payroll tax financed by an increase in the wage tax lowers both equilibrium employment...