Sin taxes have become a widely suggested policy instrument to discourage the consumption of goods deemed harmful to individuals and society. Using surveys and experiments on a representative sample of the US population, we provide evidence on how individuals think and reason about such...

We augment a standard tax model by concerns about tax equity: people get upset when labour is taxed more heavily than capital. Even the slightest concern for tax equity invalidates the common recommendation for small open economies that capital should remain tax-exempt. This holds for exogenous...

Social values shape policy outcomes. We examine the role of postmaterialism, a widely used concept in the social sciences, for the mix of capital and labour taxation chosen by a society. Following political scientist Inglehart, we define the degree of postmaterialism as the relative importance...

Social values shape policy outcomes. We examine the role of postmaterialism, a widely used concept in the social sciences, for the mix of capital and labour taxation chosen by a society. Following political scientist Inglehart, we define the degree of postmaterialism as the relative importance...

We study bank runs using a novel historical cross-country dataset that covers 184 countries over the past 200 years and combines a new narrative chronology with statistical indicators of bank deposit withdrawals. We document the following facts: (i) the unconditional likelihood of a bank run is...

We study bank runs using a novel historical cross-country dataset that covers 184 countries over the past 200 years and combines a new narrative chronology with statistical indicators of bank deposit withdrawals. We document the following facts: (i) the unconditional likelihood of a bank run is...