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Skip to Main Content Cold Call A podcast featuring faculty discussing cases they've written and the lessons they impart. Subscribe on iTunes 29 Sep...
- 2020
- Working Paper
Prioritarianism and Optimal Taxation
By: Matti Tuomala and Matthew C. Weinzierl
Prioritarianism has been at the center of the formal approach to optimal tax theory since its modern starting point in Mirrlees (1971), but most theorists’ use of it is motivated by tractability rather than explicit normative reasoning. We characterize analytically and...
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Keywords:
Prioritarianism;
Optimal Taxation;
Utilitarianism;
Redistribution;
Inverse-optimum;
Taxation;
Theory
- November 2020
- Article
The Role of Taxes in the Disconnect Between Corporate Performance and Economic Growth
By: Urooj Khan, Suresh Nallareddy and Ethan Rouen
We investigate the relation between the growth in corporate profits and the overall U.S. economy, focusing on the impact of the U.S. corporate tax regime on this relation. We document that the growth of corporate profits, on average, has outpaced the growth of the...
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- 2020
- Working Paper
Designing, Not Checking, for Policy Robustness: An Example with Optimal Taxation
By: Benjami Lockwood, Afras Y. Sial and Matthew C. Weinzierl
Economists typically check the robustness of their results by comparing them across plausible ranges of parameter values and model structures. A preferable approach to robustness—for the purposes of policymaking and evaluation—is to design policy that takes these...
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- November 2020
- Article
Taxation in Matching Markets
By: Arnaud Dupuy, Alfred Galichon, Sonia Jaffe and Scott Duke Kominers
We analyze the effects of taxation in two-sided matching markets, i.e., markets in which all agents have heterogeneous preferences over potential partners. In matching markets, taxes can generate inefficiency on the allocative margin by changing who is matched to whom,...
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- June 2020
- Article
Understanding Different Approaches to Benefit-Based Taxation
By: Robert Scherf and Matthew C. Weinzierl
The normative principle of benefit-based taxation has exerted substantial influence on many areas of public finance, but it has been largely set aside in the modern theoretical approach to optimal income taxation, where welfarist objectives dominate. A prerequisite for...
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- February 2020 (Revised November 2020)
- Case
Australia: Commodities, Competitiveness, Climate and China
By: Richard H.K. Vietor and Laura Alfaro
For the past few decades, Australia has dealt with the benefits and costs of repeated mining booms—inflation, a housing bubble, a current account deficit, and growing dependence on China. Between 1996 and 2007, however, Australia had most of these issues under control...
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- 2019
- Working Paper
Thinking Outside the Box (12): The Benefits of Increased Transparency in Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance for the 180 Million Insured
By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Barak D. Richman
Economists have long noted that the tax exclusion of employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) caused workers to purchase health plans that differ in price and other characteristics from those they would otherwise choose for themselves. We explore the short-term and long-term...
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- 2020
- Working Paper
Cutting the Gordian Knot of Employee Health Care Benefits and Costs: A Corporate Model Built on Employee Choice
By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Barak D. Richman
The U.S. employer-based health insurance tax exclusion created a system of employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) with limited insurance choices and transparency that may lock employed households into health plans that are costlier or different from those they prefer to...
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- April 2019 (Revised April 2020)
- Case
Reaganomics: Impact and Legacy
By: Tom Nicholas, John Masko and Matthew G. Preble
During the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan and his administration instituted several far-reaching economic policies that had both near- and long-term impacts on such aspects of the U.S. economy as monetary policy, inflation, the tax structure, and the role of...
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- March 2019 (Revised February 2021)
- Case
America's Budget Impasse, 2001–2020
America's Budget Impasse, 2001–2020, draws on recent government documents to explore America's economic performance since 2001, the ideology and effects of the Bush tax cuts, Obama's fiscal stimulus in 2009, the Trump tax cuts in 2017, and President Trump's budget...
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- 2019
- Working Paper
Understanding Different Approaches to Benefit-Based Taxation
By: Robert Scherf and Matthew C. Weinzierl
The normative principle of benefit-based taxation has exerted substantial influence on many areas of public finance, but it has been largely set aside in the modern theoretical approach to optimal income taxation, where welfarist objectives dominate. A prerequisite for...
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- December 2018 (Revised June 2020)
- Case
Creating the French Behavioral Insights Team
By: Michael Luca, Ariella Kristal and Emilie Billaud
This case explores how neuroscientist Mariam Chammat helped set up the first behavioral insights team at the center of the French government, and encouraged French administrations to innovate and create policy initiatives based on psychological theories of influence...
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- November 2018
- Teaching Note
The Tax Man: Taxes in Private Equity Real Estate
By: Nori Gerardo Lietz and Sayiddah Fatima McCree
Teaching Note for HBS No. 218-077. This teaching note provides the back up analysis for the various alternatives to be considered in choosing the optimal investment structure for the real estate acquisition. It contrasts the interests of the tax exempt investors...
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- 2018
- Working Paper
Taxation and Innovation in the 20th Century
By: Ufuk Akcigit, John Grigsby, Tom Nicholas and Stefanie Stantcheva
This paper studies the effect of corporate and personal taxes on innovation in the United States over the 20th century. We use three new datasets: a panel of the universe of inventors who patent since 1920; a dataset of the employment, location, and patents of firms...
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- July 2018 (Revised September 2018)
- Case
Donald Trump and the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act
By: Matthew Weinzierl and Robert Scherf
In January 2018, President Donald Trump was full of optimism. He had just signed the most substantial legislation of his young presidency, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), making major changes to the tax code. Echoing his campaign slogan—Make America Great Again—Trump...
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- July 2018
- Article
Revisiting the Classical View of Benefit-Based Taxation
This article incorporates into modern optimal tax theory the classical logic of benefit‐based taxation in which an individual's benefit from the activities of the state is tied to his or her income‐earning ability. First‐best optimal policy is characterized...
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- 2018
- Working Paper
Corporate Tax Cuts Increase Income Inequality
By: Suresh Nallareddy, Ethan Rouen and Juan Carlos Suárez Serrato
This paper studies the effects of corporate tax changes on income inequality. Using state corporate tax rate changes as a setting, we show that cutting state corporate tax rates leads to increases in income inequality. This result is robust to using regression and...
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- April 2018
- Article
The Power of Voice in Stimulating Morality: Eliciting Taxpayer Preferences Increases Tax Compliance
By: Cait Lamberton, Jan-Emmanuel De Neve and Michael I. Norton
Decisions about paying taxes represent one of the most common moral quandaries faced by citizens. In the
present research, we argue that taxpayer compliance can be raised by increasing “voice”: allowing taxpayers
to express non-binding preferences about the way their...
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Keywords:
Morality;
Public Policy;
Ethics;
Moral Sensibility;
Taxation;
Policy;
Attitudes;
Governance Compliance
- March 2018
- Teaching Note
Making Target the Target: Boycotts and Corporate Political Activity (A) and (B)
By: Nien-hê Hsieh and Victor Wu
Through the challenges facing Target, the case examines the ways in which corporations can become involved in political and legislative debates and processes, ranging from campaign contributions to lobbying. In 2016, Target CEO Brian Cornell must determine how to...
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Keywords:
Public Opinion;
Social Issues;
Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact;
Mission and Purpose;
Problems and Challenges;
Laws and Statutes;
Rights;
Crisis Management;
Risk Management;
Media;
Political Elections;
Taxation;
Corporate Accountability;
Values and Beliefs;
Fairness;
Diversity;
Customers;
Communication;
Business and Government Relations;
Retail Industry;
United States
- March 2018
- Article
Financing the African Colonial State: The Revenue Imperative and Forced Labor
Although recent studies on African colonial tax systems have deepened our understanding of early fiscal capacity building efforts in the region, they have largely ignored the contributions from a widely used but invisible source of state revenue: that of labor...
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