The Costs of Corporate Tax Complexity

By Eric Zwick

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2021

Does tax code complexity alter corporate behavior? We investigate this question by studying the decision to claim refunds for tax losses. In a sample of 1.2 million observations from the population of corporate tax returns, only 37 percent of eligible fir...

Heterogeneous Workers and Federal Income Taxes in a Spatial Equilibrium

By Mark Colas and Kevin Hutchinson

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2021

We study the geographic incidence and efficiency of an income tax by estimating a spatial equilibrium model with heterogeneous workers. The US income tax shifts households out of high-productivity cities, leading to locational inefficiency of 0.25 percent...

Does the Individual Mandate Affect Insurance Coverage? Evidence from Tax Returns

By Ithai Z. Lurie, Daniel W. Sacks, and Bradley Heim

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2021

We estimate the effect of the ACA's individual mandate on insurance coverage using regression discontinuity and regression kink designs with tax return data. We have four key results. First, the actual penalty paid per uninsured month is less than half th...

Aid, China, and Growth: Evidence from a New Global Development Finance Dataset

By Axel Dreher, Andreas Fuchs, Bradley Parks, Austin Strange, and Michael J. Tierney

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2021

This article introduces a new dataset of official financing from China to 138 developing countries between 2000 and 2014. It investigates whether Chinese development finance affects economic growth in recipient countries. The results demonstrate that Chin...

Racial Divisions and Criminal Justice: Evidence from Southern State Courts

By Benjamin Feigenberg and Conrad Miller

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2021

The US criminal justice system is exceptionally punitive. We test whether racial heterogeneity is one cause, exploiting cross-jurisdiction variation in punishment severity in four Southern states. We estimate the causal effect of jurisdiction on arrest ou...

Emissions, Transmission, and the Environmental Value of Renewable Energy

By Harrison Fell, Daniel T. Kaffine, and Kevin Novan

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2021

We examine how transmission congestion alters the environmental benefits provided by renewable generation. Using hourly data from the Texas and midcontinent electricity markets, we find that relaxing transmission constraints between the wind-rich areas an...

The Role of Electoral Incentives for Policy Innovation: Evidence from the US Welfare Reform

By Andreas Bernecker, Pierre C. Boyer, and Christina Gathmann

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2021

How do governors' reelection motives affect policy experimentation? We develop a theoretical model of this situation, and then test the predictions in data on US state-level welfare reforms from 1978 to 2007. This period marked the most dramatic shift in ...

AEA Member Announcements: 2020 Report of the Ethics Committee and Considerations in Recommending Ethics Investigations

[News]

April 29, 2021

View member announcements from April 30, 2021.

Do School Spending Cuts Matter? Evidence from the Great Recession

By C. Kirabo Jackson, Cora Wigger, and Heyu Xiong

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2021

During the Great Recession, national public school per-pupil spending fell by roughly 7 percent and persisted beyond the recovery. The impact of such large and sustained education funding cuts is not well understood. To examine this, first, we document ...

Front Matter

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2021

Mammograms and Mortality: How Has the Evidence Evolved?

[Symposium: Preventive Medicine]

By Amanda E. Kowalski

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2021

Decades of evidence reveal a complicated relationship between mammograms and mortality. Mammograms may detect deadly cancers early, but they may also lead to the diagnosis and potentially fatal treatment of cancers that would never progress to cause sympt...

LGBTQ Economics

By M. V. Lee Badgett, Christopher S. Carpenter, and Dario Sansone

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2021

Public attitudes and policies toward LGBTQ individuals have improved substantially in recent decades. Economists are actively shaping the discourse around these policies and contributing to our understanding of the economic lives of LGBTQ individuals. In ...

The Ways of Corruption in Infrastructure: Lessons from the Odebrecht Case

By Nicolás Campos, Eduardo Engel, Ronald D. Fischer, and Alexander Galetovic

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2021

In 2016, the Brazilian construction firm Odebrecht was fined 2.6 billion USD by the US Department of Justice. It was the largest corruption case ever prosecuted under the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Our examination of judicial documents and media re...

The Rise of Research Teams: Benefits and Costs in Economics

By Benjamin F. Jones

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2021

Economics research is increasingly performed in teams, and team-authored work has a large and increasing impact advantage. This article considers the benefits and costs of this "rise of teams." Among its benefits, teamwork allows individuals to aggregate ...

Recommendations for Further Reading

By Timothy Taylor

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2021

The United States of Europe: A Gravity Model Evaluation of the Four Freedoms

[Symposium: European Union]

By Keith Head and Thierry Mayer

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2021

One of the pillars of the 1957 Treaty of Rome that ultimately led to the European Union is the commitment to the four freedoms of movement (goods, services, persons, and capital). Over the following decades, as the members expanded in numbers, they also s...

The Resilience of the Euro

[Symposium: European Union]

By Philip R. Lane

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2021

Over 2014–2019, the euro area charted a substantial post-crisis economic recovery while also reducing macro-financial vulnerabilities. The array of post-crisis institutional reforms has improved the capacity of the euro area to withstand adverse shocks,...

Migration and Labor Market Integration in Europe

[Symposium: European Union]

By David Dorn and Josef Zweimüller

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2021

The European labor market allows for the border-free mobility of workers across 31 countries that cover most of the continent's population. However, rates of migration across European countries remain considerably lower than interstate migration in the Un...

Fiscal Policy in Europe: Controversies over Rules, Mutual Insurance, and Centralization

[Symposium: European Union]

By Florin Bilbiie, Tommaso Monacelli, and Roberto Perotti

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2021

We discuss the main fiscal policy issues in Europe, focusing on two that are at the core of the current debate. The first is that the government deficit and debt were, from the outset, the key objects of contention in the debate that led to the creation...

An Ounce of Prevention

[Symposium: Preventive Medicine]

By Joseph P. Newhouse

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2021

I look at prevention through an economic lens and make three main points. First, those advocating preventive measures are often asked how much money a given measure saves. This question is misguided. Rather, preventive measures can be thought of as insu...