Austen-Smith and Banks (1996) showed that sincere voting is not typically an equilibrium of the Condorcet voting model when the electorate is large. Here, we reverse their finding by adding to the Condorcet model a third type of voter—one that receives no information in favor of either of the alternatives—as well as global uncertainty about the probability that [...]
Many of the motivating examples and applications of non-cooperative bargaining involve groups bargaining against each other. However, much of the literature ignores the structures of profit sharing within the group. This structure determines the incentives for each player and there by determines the bargaining power of each group. We construct a model in which [...]
We consider an infinitely repeated legislative bargaining game with three players who split a fixed surplus in every period. The status quo allocation evolves endogenously over time, as agents can approve new proposals by simple majority rule. One player is permanently endowed with veto power, and must approve any amendment to the status quo. [...]
In this article, Patel and McClelland present a prototype destination basis cash flow tax to replace the existing corporate income tax. To gain some insight into the potential consequences of the United States adopting a cash flow tax of this form the authors use a panel of tax returns over the 2004-2013 period to [...]
Investor-level taxation may distort merger and acquisition decisions when capital gains are taxed at a preferable rate, relative to dividends. The intuition is that the value of a target’s assets depends on whether the target is acquired. If it is acquired, then the firm’s equity is taxed at the capital gains rate. If, instead, the [...]
We investigate the tax implications for the new recreational marijuana industry in the United States, which reached a size of $9 billion in 2017. We exploit administrative data from Washington state to evaluate market conduct, and we estimate the elasticity of supply to be 1.46 . In addition, we conduct a survey of marijuana [...]
Nathan Seegert, Marinho Bertanha, and Andrew McCallum, 2019. The authors study the bunching identification strategy for an elasticity parameter that. [download pdf]
Nathan Seegert, Jason Sandvik, Richard Saouma, and Christopher Stanton, 2020. In a study of employee responses to compensation changes that ultimately reduced take-home pay by 7% for the average affected worker, the authors find that these changes caused a significant increase in the turnover rate of the firm’s most productive employees. The response was relatively muted [...]
We use novel data from a leading online job search platform to examine the impact of corporate distress on firms’ ability to attract job applicants. Survey responses suggest that job seekers accurately perceive firms’ financial condition, as measured by companies’ credit default swap prices and accounting data. Analyzing responses to job postings by major financial firms during [...]
Many firms issue stock options to all employees. We consider three potential economic justifications for this practice: providing incentives to employees, inducing employees to sort, and helping firms retain employees. We gather data on firms' stock option grants to middle managers from three distinct sources, and use two methods to assess which theories appear to explain observed [...]