We study the effect of alcohol excise taxes on alcohol‐related fatal traffic crashes by examining two large increases in excise taxes in Illinois that occurred in 1999 and in 2009. Using the synthetic control method, we do not find evidence that the tax increases led to a long‐term reduction...

What we eat and drink can cause obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and other conditions. In response, many governments have enacted or are considering taxes on unhealthy food and drinks. This report evaluates the rationale behind such taxes; reviews evidence on their effects; analyzes different...

Most indexes in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) use a form of the "matched-model" approach. It is frequently assumed that this approach accurately reflects inflation for items that have no major trend in quality. In this paper we investigate that hypothesis using CPI data for retail food items....

In this paper we examine the effect of the income tax on charitable giving. An important challenge in this literature has been to estimate the long-run response of giving to a persistent change in tax-price, which can be difficult to distinguish from intertemporal substitution arising from...

This article investigates the heterogeneity in the tax elasticities of personal capital gains realizations. We first examine the skewed nature of both capital gains assets ownership and their realizations. We then briefly review earlier studies, including Dowd, McClelland, and Muthitacharoen...

This article reviews the basic mechanisms of federal tax incentives, the current level, sources and recipients of charitable donations, and the estimated magnitude of the response to tax incentives. In addition, we discuss the possible effects of recent tax proposals on charitable giving. These...

In this article, several econometric problems arising from estimating models of charitable contributions are examined. An instrumental variable technique proposed by Clotfelter is used to reduce the bias of the estimated price effect and compare it with other methods. Linear dependence between...