Jason Cook, 2021. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the only universal component of the US safety net. In 2019, the government spent over 60 billion dollars to provide nutrition benefits to more than 36 million Americans. [download pdf]
Elena Patel, Jeffrey Coles, Nathan Seegert, and Matthew Smith, 2018. In a study that uses a large, newly-available administrative dataset on U.S. corporate tax filings, the authors find that U.S. firms are more sensitive to changes in corporate income tax rate than previous studies suggest and that lowering the corporate tax rate from 35% to 25% would increase [...]
Elena Patel, Lucas Goodman, and Molly Saunders-Scott, 2021. In this paper, we study tax loss asymmetry for S corporate owners. These owners use most losses contemporaneously, reducing the tax asymmetry compared to C corporations. [download pdf]
Prosecutors play an important role in holding police accountable by determining whether or not an officer has broken the law.
Allison Stashko and Haritz Garro, 2021. Prosecutors play an important role in holding police accountable by determining whether or not an officer has broken the law. At the same time, prosecutors and police officers work together closely, raising concern over conflicts of interest. [download pdf]
In March the economy moved into Boom territory with revenues higher than 2019 levels and high expectations for future revenue growth. Businesses report X% higher revenues than at this time in 2019 and they expect revenues to steadily grow in the next few months. Despite the overall improvement in business conditions, there remains large [...]
Consumer confidence in the Utah economy in the near future grew in February. Current expectations of spending, income, and savings over the next three months increased compared to expectations reported in January, which suggest a growing optimism across all three categories. In particular, survey respondents anticipate a larger income increase than reported in January. [...]
Adam Looney, Jeff Larrimore, and David Splinter. In Melissa S. Kearney and Amy Ganz (eds.), 2020. The “middle class” has benefitted from government redistribution in recent decades. For individuals in non-elderly households in the middle three income quintiles (the middle class), the share of federal taxes decreased, and the share of transfers increased. [download pdf]
Nathan Seegert and Elizabeth Berger, 2020. Studying marijuana sales data in Washington state—where only half of all marijuana businesses have access to cash management services and none have access to lending from financial institutions—the authors find that access to cash management increases firms’ profits by 40%. [download pdf]
Nathan Seegert, Jason Sandvik, Richard Saouma and Christopher Stanton, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2020. Results from a field experiment suggest simple management practices encouraging workers to ask peers about their own sales techniques substantially improved individual performance. [download pdf]