While evidence indicates that religious persons are more generous on average than nonreligious persons, little work has been done to determine if this greater generosity is a general pattern or specific to church-based institutions. Limited research addresses if, or how, religious and nonreligious givers respond to subsidies. This paper uses experimental data to examine differences in the amoun...

Family Bargaining and Taxes: A Prolegomenon to the Analysis of Joint Taxation Does joint taxation disadvantage women? To answer that question, this paper begins by reviewing unitary and bargaining models of intrafamily allocation, and then discusses the determinants of "bargaining power" in a world without taxes. It argues that wage rates rather than earnings are determinants of bargaining powe...

This paper quantitatively investigates the optimal capital income taxation in the general equilibrium overlapping generations model, which incorporates characteristics of housing and the U.S. preferential tax treatment for owner-occupied housing. Housing tax policy is found to have a substantial effect on how capital income should be taxed. Given the U.S. preferential tax treatment for owner-oc...

We estimate the importance of household liquidity for the effect of the Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS) on vehicle transactions. We measure the average program impact by comparing households with “clunkers” eligible for CARS to households with similar vehicles that are ineligible. The liquidity provided by CARS contributed to its larger than anticipated take-up. Clunkers with existing loans,...

This paper derives optimal asset allocations (which assets to hold) and asset locations (in which accounts to hold them) for a risk-averse investor saving for retirement. The investor can hold taxable corporate bonds, tax-exempt municipal bonds, and stocks either in a tax-deferred or a conventional taxable savings account. Taxable bonds have a preferred location in the taxdeferred account and t...

Optimal policy rules—including those regarding income taxation, commodity taxation, public goods, and externalities—are typically derived in models with homogeneous preferences. This article reconsiders many central results for the case in which preferences for commodities, public goods, and externalities are heterogeneous. When preference differences are observable, standard second-best result...

We model high income earners as sellers of quality services in a competitive assignment framework. Sellers (high income earners) are differentiated by ability; buyers by their taste for the service. There is assortative matching of buyers and sellers. We show that conventional optimal tax formulas are modified both by a social concern for buyers and an altered mapping of the talent into the inc...

This paper investigates the trade-offs between local elites and state agents as tax collectors in low-capacity states. We study a randomized policy experiment assigning neighborhoods of large Congolese city to property collection by chiefs or agents. Chief raised compliance 3.2 percentage points, increasing revenue 44 percent. Chiefs collected more bribes but did not undermine morale trust gove...

This article combines all available data to produce pretax and post-tax income inequality series in 26 European countries from 1980 2017. Our estimates are consistent with macroeconomic growth comparable US distributional national accounts. Inequality grew nearly countries, but much less than the US. Contrary a widespread view, we demonstrate that Europe’s lower levels cannot be explained by mo...

H24 Diagonally self-affine fractal cartoons. Part 3: " anomalous " Hausdorff dimension and multifractal " localization " • Illustrated long chapter foreword. An " anomaly " can be dismissed, or welcomed as a challenge to be faced. Moreover, the familiar mantra applies. When facing a challenge, the recommended first step is to become acquainted with its nature as intimately as possible. It is be...