Ravideep Sethi and Ewout Verriest, 2019. Considering an infinitely repeated legislative bargaining game with three players, the authors show that a sufficiently patient and powerful veto player (for example a monarch with a high recognition probability) may have an incentive to cede some of her agenda-setting power to her non-veto opponents (for example the bourgeoisie and [...]

Nathan Seegert, Laura Konda, and Elena Patel, 2019. In a study that documents the effect of the 2011 redesign of IRS Form 3800, the authors find that while the redesign was successful in increasing compliance after 2011, firms reported 23% more carry-forward general business credits in 2011. Ultimately, this cost the government between $1.4 and $1.8 billion [...]

Elena Patel, Jim Hines, Nathan Seegert,  and Matthew Smith, 2019. Using new methods to study the universe of c-corporations in the U.S., the authors find evidence that corporations are much more sensitive to changes in corporate tax rates than previous estimates suggest. Specifically, they find that the elasticity of corporate taxable. [download pdf]

Nathat Seegert, David Albouy, Kristian Behrens, and Frédéric Robert-Nicoud, 2019. Using a spatial urban model to study optimal city size, the authors determine that in equilibrium the largest cities on the most amenable sites are underpopulated, whereas smaller cities on less amenable sites are overpopulated. [download pdf]

Adam Looney, 2019. The author examines a legislative effort to extend the temporary tax cuts on wine, beer, and liquor included in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and argues that Congress should close a loophole in the draft legislation that would that increase the cost of the bill, benefit larger producers and foreign importers, [...]

Ravideep Sethi, 2020. Using a model that could apply to candidates seeking votes or to a product design team seeking to optimize sales, the author finds that the optimal policy platform or product design is one where the entrant differentiates just enough, so that the valence advantage of the incumbent is countered. [download pdf]

Ravideep Sethi, 2020. In a model that studies worker ability and conscientiousness (cost of effort) over time, the author shows that during the agent’s early career, effort is a higher component of output and. [download pdf]

Elena Patel, Lucas Goodman, and Molly Saunders-Scott, 2019. The authors contribute to an important and growing literature examining the behavior of passthrough business owners by using administrative tax data to investigate whether the income that owners of S-corporations receive from other sources is sensitive to negative shocks to pass-through income. [download pdf]

Nathan Seegert, 2019. The author develops an excessive risk index to quantify the amount of unnecessary risk governments accept when writing tax policy among uncertainty in private and public consumption. The author finds that the cost of inefficient risk for U.S. state governments is roughly 40% of their expected tax revenues and that this cost is [...]

Nathan Seegert, and Stephen Salant, 2019. 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 firm value [...]