A fundamental property of a progressive income tax is that it provides implicit collective insurance against idiosyncratic shocks to income by dampening the variability of disposable income and consumption. The Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 (ERTA) and the Tax Reform Act of 1986 (TRA86) greatly reduced the number of marginal tax brackets and the maximum marginal rate, which limits the abilit...

Empirical researchers frequently obtain estimates of the behavioral response to a tax change by exploiting variation in the degree to which a tax reform affects different groups of individuals based on their individual characteristics and tax situations. This paper analyzes the conditions under which it is possible to obtain a causal average treatment effect using pre-reform characteristics as ...

Regulations to curb tax avoidance and evasion through charitable foundations have been in place since the Tax Reform Act of 1969. Newly-compiled longitudinal data makes it possible to estimate the effects of these regulations by comparing affected and unaffected foundations before and after the reform. Donations and entry dropped precipitously. Proxy variables suggest significant deterrence of ...

The paper studies simple strategies of labor tax reform in a search and matching model of the labor market featuring endogenous labor supply. Changing the composition of the tax wedge—that is, reducing a payroll tax and increasing a progressive wage tax such that the marginal tax wedge remains unaffected—increases employment, reduces the equilibrium unemployment rate, and increases public reven...