There is growing interest in multi-sector models that combine aggregate balanced growth, consistent with the well-known Kaldor facts, with systematic changes in the sectoral allocation of resources, consistent with the Kuznets facts. Although variations in the income elasticity of demand across...

There is growing interest in multi-sector models that combine aggregate balanced growth, consistent with the well-known Kaldor facts, with systematic changes in the sectoral allocation of resources, consistent with the Kuznets facts. Although variations in the income elasticity of demand across...

Italy's growth performance has been lacklustre in the last two decades. The economy has a low R&D intensity; firms are smaller and less likely to grow or exit than firms in other advanced countries; the shadow economy is large. I show how these features arise simultaneously in a Schumpeterian...

According to increasing marginal tendency to tax avoidance, we establish a dynamic theoretical model, which illustrates an inverted U-curve relationship between economic growth and income inequality in the long run. This finding stands in sharp contrast to the Kuznets curve—whereby inequality...

Using confidential data on the foreign operations of US multinational firms, I examine innovation in the context of an unexpected policy shock that facilitated foreign tax arbitrage. I find that after the shock, US multinationals shifted more of their intellectual property and taxable income to...

This paper evaluates the relative importance of labor productivity vs. income taxes and social security contributions for tax compliance in an economy with a large degree of informality. To this end, we build a bargaining model in which matched employer-employee pairs of heterogeneous productive...

Lawmakers have long used the tax code for purposes far beyond simply collecting revenue to fund the federal government. Through the insertion of specialized tax provisions, the tax code is used to achieve policy and political aims as well. But these special provisions come at a price: economic...

Business income is systematically underreported and accounts for a sizeable share of the US tax gap. In this paper, I examine the importance of tax evasion in the entrepreneurial sector for the effects of tax reforms. In particular, I analyze the long-run effects of switching from a progressive...

Each year, the government loses hundreds of billions of dollars in tax revenue due to underreporting by individual taxpayers. According to standard deterrence theory, policymakers should be able to reduce tax evasion by increasing tax penalties, raising the audit rate, or some combination of the...