Published Papers

Dynamic Patterns of Loss Use and Effective Tax Rates: Owners of S-Corporations

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]

Probability-Based Estimates of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 Seroprevalence and Detection Fraction, Utah, United States

Adam Looney, Matthew Samore, Steven Alder, Andrew T. Pavia, Nathan Seegert, Maclean Gaulin, Brian Orleans, Kristina Stratford, and Mu-Jeung Yang, 2021.
We aimed to generate an unbiased estimate of the incidence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection in 4 urban counties in Utah, USA. [download pdf]

High variability in transmission of SARS-CoV-2 within households and implications for control

Adam Looney, Damon J.A. Toth, Alexander B. Beams, Lindsay T. Keegan, Yue Zhang, Tom Greene, Brian Orleans, Nathan Seegert, Stephen C. Alder, and Matthew H. Samore, 2021.
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) poses a high risk of transmission in close-contact indoor settings, which may include households. Prior studies have found a wide range of household secondary attack rates and may contain biases due to simplifying assumptions about transmission variability and test accuracy. [download pdf]

The Consequences of Student Loan Credit Expansions: Evidence from Three Decades of Default Cycles

Adam Looney and Constantine Yannelis, 2021.
This paper studies the link between credit availability and student loan repayment using administrative federal student loan data. We demonstrate that policy-driven changes in credit available to high-default institutions explain almost all of the historical time-series variation in defaults. [download pdf]

Working for Your Bread: The Labor Supply Effects of SNAP

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]

Prosecutor Elections and Police Accountability

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]

Middle-Class Redistribution: Tax and Transfer Policy for Most Americans

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]

Rent-Seeking through Collective Bargaining: Teachers Unions and Education Production

Jason Cook, Stéphane Lavertu, and Corbin Miller, 2020.
We estimate the effect of Ohio teachers unions on education production by comparing the outcomes of districts that allocated new tax revenue in the midst of collective bargaining negotiations (subject to relatively high union pressure) to the outcomes of districts that allocated new tax revenue well before negotiations (subject to relatively low union pressure). [download pdf]

Is There Still Son Preference in the United States?

Jason Cook, Francine D. Blau, Lawrence M. Kahn, Peter Brummund, and Miriam Larson-Koester,  2020.
In this paper, we use 2008–2013 American Community Survey data to update and further probe evidence on son preference in the USA. In light of the substantial increase in immigration, we examine this question separately for natives and immigrants. [download pdf]

Government Privatization and Political Participation: The Case of Charter Schools

Jason Cook, Vladimir Kogan, Stéphane Lavertu, and Zachary Peskowitz, 2020.
Governments around the world have privatized public services in the name of efficiency and citizen empowerment, but some argue that privatization could also affect citizen participation in democratic governance. We explore this possibility by estimating the impact of charter schools (which are publicly funded but privately operated) on school district elections. [download pdf]

How to Fix Federal Student Loan Programs; and Fix the System, Don’t Throw it Out

Adam Looney and Constantine Yanellis, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 2020.
In a Point/Counterpoint exchange in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, the authors argue that the government should repair the student loan system by creating incentives for institutional accountability and restricting loan eligibility and amounts based on student outcomes. [download pdf]

Applied Game Theory

Adam Meirowitz and Kristopher Ramsay, Handbook of Political Science, Sage Press, 2020.
In this chapter in The SAGE Handbook of Research Methods in Political Science and International Relations, the authors put forward a framework for using game theory to study politics. [download pdf]

Marijuana Taxation and Imperfect Competition

Nathan Seegert, Elena Patel and Christopher Mace, National Tax Journal, 2020.
Using administrative data from Washington state to study the recreational marijuana industry, the authors determine that in perfectly competitive markets, marijuana producers pay slightly more of the industry’s tax burden than consumers. In a monopoly market, consumers pay most of the tax burden. [download pdf]

Workplace Knowledge Flows

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]

Half Banked: The Real Effects of Financial Exclusion on Firms

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]

Career Concerns with Cost Uncertainty

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]

Optimal Differentiation through Step-wise Learning

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]

Rethinking Strength in Numbers: Bilateral Bargaining in Groups

Ravideep Sethi, and WonSeok Yoo, 2020.
Constructing a model in which two groups of individuals are engaged in alternate offer bargaining, the authors find that, counter to common intuition, the smaller a group is, the more it is able to extract in bargaining. This implies that dictatorships have an innate advantage in bargaining against democracies. [download pdf]

The Power of the Agenda Setter: A Dynamic Legislative Bargaining

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 nobility), through a “voluntary democratization” process which permanently lowers her proposal power. [download pdf]

Crossing the District Line: Border Mismatch and Targeted Redistribution

Allison Stashko, 2020.
Using a probabilistic voting model in which parties compete to win legislative districts but can only allocate resources at the county level, the author shows that a mismatch in electoral district borders and local government borders—which occurs in every U.S. state—distorts the distribution of public funds. [download pdf]

Do Police Maximize Arrests or Minimize Crime? Evidence from Racial Profiling in the U.S.

Allison Stashko, 2020.
In a study that aims to identify the type of discrimination driving racial profiling in police stops, the author solves two models of racial profiling and finds evidence that police officers search for illegal activity in order to maximize arrests, not to minimize crime. [download the pdf]

Consumer Protection in Auto Lending

Jen Brown and Mark Jansen , 2020.
In a study that examines the impact of consumer protection laws on loan terms and outcomes in auto financing, the authors find that while laws prohibiting wage garnishment benefit borrowers who default, borrowers who pay their debt in full face higher total observable loan costs where wage garnishment is prohibited. [download pdf]

The Optimal Distribution of Population Across Cities

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]

The Impact of Investor-level Taxation on Mergers and Acquisitions

Nathan Seegert and Eric Ohrn, 2019.
In a study that examines the impact of shareholder taxation on the quality of mergers and acquisitions, the authors demonstrate how investor-level taxes can create a tax discount that distorts acquisition behavior and encourages firms to acquire more assets. This in turn decreases the return on acquired assets and the average quality of acquisitions. [download pdf]

Dispute Resolution Institutions and Strategic Militarization

Adam Meirowitz, Massimo Morelli, Kristopher Ramsay, Francesco Squintani, 2019.
The authors study a model that emphasizes the role that third-party mediators can play in effectively brokering peace and minimizing militarization during disputes that might otherwise lead to military conflict. [download pdf]

Best of the Corporate Bunch

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]

How to close the loopholes in the Craft Beverage Modernization Act

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, and contribute to alcohol dependence and abuse.  [download pdf]

General Business Credits: Estimating the Impact of a Regime Change in Mandatory Tax Disclosure

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 in corporate receipts. [download pdf]

Used and Not Lost: Examining Dynamic Patterns of S-Corporation Loss Use.

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]

Better Bunching, Nicer Notching

Nathan Seegert, Marinho Bertanha, and Andrew McCallum, 2019.
The authors study the bunching identification strategy for an elasticity parameter that. [download pdf]

Examining S-Corporation Losses and How They Are Used

Elena Patel, Katherine Lim, and Molly Saunders-Scott, 2018.
In a presentation prepared for the National Tax Association 2018 Spring Symposium, the authors examine changes to the tax treatment of S-corporation losses in the 2017 tax law and examine characteristics of S-corporations with losses, trends in losses over time, and comparisons to C-corporations. [download pdf]

Should Congestion Tolls be Set by the Government or by the Private Sector? The Knight–Pigou Debate Revisited

Nathan Seegert, and Stephen Salant, 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 firm value by 16%. [download pdf]

The Performance of State Tax Portfolios During and After the Great Recession

Nathan Seegert, 2018.
The author finds that 18 states have increased the riskiness of their tax portfolio since the Great Recession, while only five decreased the riskiness of their tax portfolio. However it was a need for revenue that drove many of these states to accept additional revenue volatility. Roughly half of the states that changed their tax portfolio since the Great Recession have decreased their level of unnecessary risk. [download pdf]

How Do Private Firms Respond to Corporate Taxes?

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 firm value by 16%. [download pdf]

The Long and the Short of It: Do Public and Private Firms Invest Differently?

Elena Patel, Naomi Feldman, Laura Kawano, Nirupama Rao, Michael Stevens and Jesse Edgerton, 2018.
Using data from U.S. corporate tax returns, the authors find robust evidence that public firms invest more than private firms overall, particularly in research and development, and that firms dedicate more of their investment to research and development following an IPO. The authors also find that firms reduce these investments upon going private. [download pdf]

Employee Responses to Compensation Changes

Nathan Seegert, Jason Sandvik, Richard Saouma, and Christopher Stanton, 2018.
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 for less productive workers. [download pdf]

How Do Firms Respond to Corporate Taxes?

Nathan Seegert, Jeffrey Coles, Elena Patel, and Matthew Smith, 2018.
The author finds that 18 states have increased the riskiness of their tax portfolio since the Great Recession, while only five decreased the riskiness of their tax portfolio. However it was a need for revenue that drove many of these states to accept additional revenue volatility. Roughly half of the states that changed their tax portfolio since the Great Recession have decreased their level of unnecessary risk. [download pdf]

9 Facts about Pass-through Businesses

Adam Looney and Aaron Krupkion, 2017.
To help understand the policy considerations surrounding the taxation of pass-through businesses and the implications of potential reforms, the authors present nine facts about pass-throughs and the current U.S. approach to taxing business. [download pdf]

A Risk Sharing Proposal for Student Loans

Adam Looney, Tiffany Chou, and Tara Watson, 2017.
To align incentives of higher education institutions with their student loan borrowers and taxpayers, the authors propose an institutional accountability system in which institutions with poor loan performance reimburse the federal loan program for a fraction of unrepaid loan dollars. [download pdf]

Abuse of tax deductions for charitable donations of conservation lands are on the rise

Adam Looney, 2017.
The author finds that abuse of a tax deduction intended to encourage conservation of environmentally important land and historic buildings has cost the government billions of dollars of revenue while often doing little to advance environmental protection. [download pdf]

Sincere Voting in Large Elections

Adam Meirowitz and Avidit Acharya, 2017.
In a paper that re-examines the discrepancy between sincere and strategic voting in the seminal Condorcet model, the authors introduce a third type of voter to the model: one who receives no evidence that the suspect is either innocent or guilty. The authors create a model that finds strong support for rational voting. Specifically, it shows that, with a large enough electorate, the two Condorcet types vote sincerely assuming all types of voters don’t vote for the same alternative. [download pdf]

What Would a Cash Flow Tax Look Like? Historical Panel Lessons

Elena Patel, 2017.
In this article, the authors present a prototype destination basis cash flow tax to replace the existing corporate income tax. The authors suggest this reform could bolster the ability of the tax system to address income inequality. [download pdf]

Gender, Competition and Choices in Higher Education

Jen Brown and Anne Boring, 2017.
In a study of students at a selective French university competing for spots in foreign universities to fulfill a mandatory requirement, the authors find that average- and high-ability female students systematically request universities that are worse than their academic standing and that some of the students’ behavior is explained by risk aversion. [download pdf]

Misconduct in Financial Services: Differences across Organizations

Jen Brown and Dylan Minor, 2017.
Using sales complaint data for insurance agents, the authors find that agents working exclusively for large branded firms are more likely to be the subject of justified sales complaints, relative to smaller independent experts, despite doing substantially less business. In addition, more experienced experts attract more complaints per year. [download pdf]

Peer Information and Risk Taking under Competitive and Non-competitive Pay Schemes

Jen Brown, Dimitry Ryvkin and Philip Brookins, 2017.
In a study of how pay incentive schemes affect employees’ job performance, the authors find that when no peer information is available, relative rewards schemes are associated with significantly less risk-taking than non-competitive rewards. The opposite occurs when decision-makers receive information about their peers’ actions and/or outcomes. [download pdf]

Measuring Loan Outcomes at Postsecondary Institutions: Cohort Repayment Rates as an Indicator of Student Success and Institutional Accountability

Adam Looney, Tiffany Chou , and Tara Watson, 2017.
The authors identify a particular metric of institutional loan performance, the cohort repayment rate (i.e. a measure of how much of their loans a particular group of students has repaid several years after graduation), that could be used to create accountability among higher education institutions. Ultimately, it could help drive more low- and middle-income college borrowers toward schools that do a good job of providing economic mobility to low-income students. [download pdf]

The Rise of Alternative Work Arrangements: Evidence and Implications for Tax Filing and Benefit Coverage

Adam Looney, Emilie Jackson, and Shanthi Ramnath, 2017.
In this paper, the authors draw on administrative tax records to provide a more complete picture of the growing number of American workers who earn income outside of traditional employee-employer relationships through self-employment and business ownership. [download pdf]

Does Market Power Encourage or Discourage Investment? Evidence from the Hospital Industry

Elena Patel and Nathan Seegert, 2017.
The authors study an investment tax shock on U.S. hospitals and find that hospitals in concentrated markets increased investment by 5.0% ($2.1 million) more in response to tax incentives than firms in competitive markets. Further, firms’ investment responses monotonically increased with market concentration. [download pdf]