The COVID-19 crisis poses new policy challenges and has spurred new research agendas in public economics. In this article, we selectively reflect on how the field of public economics has been shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic and discuss several areas where more research is necessary. We highlight...

Prior studies show that taxes matter for the residential locations of high-income earners. But, states raise a significant share of revenue from nonresidents. Using variation in state tax rates, we provide causal evidence on the effect of the net-of-tax rate on the location of labor supply for...

What is the effect of e-commerce on the geographic distribution of local sales tax revenues? Using COVID-19 as a shock to online shopping and hand-collected high-frequency data on local sales tax revenue, we document an important shift in the state and local public finance landscape. As...

Ride-hailing applications create new challenges for governments providing transit services, but also create new opportunities to raise tax revenue. To shed light on the effect of taxing or subsidizing ride-hailing applications, we extend a pseudo-monocentric city model to include multiple...

Prior studies show that taxes matter for the residential locations of high-income earners. But, states raise a significant share of revenue from nonresidents. Using variation in state tax rates, we provide causal evidence on the effect of the net-of-tax rate on the location of labor supply for...

An international tax haven is usually a low-tax jurisdiction that seeks to attract investment by foreign investors. But, there are many state and local jurisdictions within federal systems that set zero tax rates on personal or corporate income, consumption, property, and wealth in an effort to...

State borders create a discontinuous tax treatment of retail sales. In a Nash game, local tax rates will be higher on the low-state-tax side of a border. Local taxes will decrease from the nearest high-tax border and increase from the low-tax border. Using driving time from state borders and all...

Rapid growth in e-commerce has altered the ability of jurisdictions to enforce commodity taxes on a destination basis. This results in different effective tax rates depending on the way in which goods and services are purchased and the characteristics of both the products and the sellers. We...

We study the dynamics of policy diffusion when a first-moving jurisdiction that legalizes an activity reduces the probability of legalization in nearby later-acting jurisdictions. If a jurisdiction’s firms can sell to neighboring residents, but if the good is competitively sold at every...

If online transactions are tax-free, increased online shopping may lower tax rates as jurisdictions seek to reduce tax avoidance; but, if online firms remit taxes, online sales may put upward pressure on tax rates because internet sales help enforce destination-based taxes. I find that higher...