Does the Value-Added Tax Add Value? Lessons Using Administrative Data from a Diverse Set of Countries

[Symposium: Taxation and Developing Countries]

By Anne Brockmeyer ⓡ Giulia Mascagni ⓡ Vedanth Nair ⓡ Mazhar Waseem ⓡ Miguel Almunia

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2024

The value-added tax (VAT) is a cornerstone of the modern tax system. It has many desirable properties in theory: it does not distort firms' production decisions, it is difficult to evade, and it generates a substantial amount of revenue. Yet, in many co...

The Failure of Silicon Valley Bank and the Panic of 2023

By Andrew Metrick

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2024

The failure of Silicon Valley Bank on March 10, 2023 brought attention to significant weaknesses across the banking system, leading to a panic that spread to other vulnerable banks. With subsequent failures of Signature Bank and First Republic Bank, the U...

Is Pay Transparency Good?

By Zoë Cullen

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2024

Countries around the world are enacting pay transparency policies to combat pay discrimination. Since 2000, 71 percent of OECD countries have done so. Most are enacting transparency horizontally, revealing pay between coworkers doing similar work within...

Immigration and Crime: An International Perspective

By Olivier Marie and Paolo Pinotti

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2024

The association between immigration and crime has long been a subject of debate, and only recently have we encountered systematic empirical evidence on this issue. Data shows that immigrants, often younger, male, and less educated compared to natives, a...

Care Provision and the Boundaries of Production

By Nancy Folbre

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2024

Whether or not they provide subjective satisfaction to providers, unpaid services and non-market transfers typically contribute positively to total output, living standards, and the social climate. This essay describes some quantitative dimensions of care...

Job Training and Job Search Assistance Policies in Developing Countries

By Eliana Carranza and David McKenzie

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2024

Governments around the developing world face pressure to intervene actively to help jobseekers find employment. Two of the most common policies used are job training, based on the idea that many of those seeking jobs lack the skills employers want, and ...

Recommendations for Further Reading

By Timothy Taylor

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2024

Migration and Innovation: Learning from Patent and Inventor Data

[Symposium: The Global Market for Talent]

By Francesco Lissoni and Ernest Miguelez

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2024

Research on international migration and innovation relies heavily on inventor and patent data, with "migrant inventors" attracting a great deal of attention, especially for what concerns their role in easing the international transfer of knowledge. This h...

Skilled Immigrants, Firms, and the Global Geography of Innovation

[Symposium: The Global Market for Talent]

By Britta Glennon

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2024

This article begins with an overview of the policy environment in the United States and abroad for skilled immigration, with a particular focus on "supply-driven" versus "demand-driven" systems. The overview emphasizes that firms play a central role in ...

Tax Equity in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

[Symposium: Taxation and Developing Countries]

By Pierre Bachas ⓡ Anders Jensen ⓡ Lucie Gadenne

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2024

Income inequality is high and persistent in developing countries. In this paper, we ask what role taxation can or might play in reducing inequality in low and middle-income countries. Drawing on the recent literature, three findings emerge. Due to both ...

How Can Lower-Income Countries Collect More Taxes? The Role of Technology, Tax Agents, and Politics

[Symposium: Taxation and Developing Countries]

By Oyebola Okunogbe and Gabriel Tourek

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2024

Increasing tax revenues is a major policy goal in many low- and lower-middle-income countries. While economic growth is an important determinant of taxation, available evidence indicates that it does not automatically increase taxation. Rather, countrie...

Committee on the Status of LGBTQ+ Individuals in the Economics Profession

[Page]

Sugar taxes, homelessness, and the Nobel Prize

[News]

February 01, 2024

Reading recommendations from Timothy Taylor, managing editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives"

Call for Applications: Miller Indigenous Economic Development Fellowship

[News]

February 08, 2024

The deadline for this opportunity is March 1, 2024.

AEA-CEE Members

[Page]

Current Members of the Education Committee

CSWEP East

[Page]

The roots of US innovation clusters

[Research Highlight]

February 09, 2024

Daniel Gross and Bhaven Sampat discuss the impact of one of the largest shocks to federal R&D funding in US economic history.

America, Jump-Started: World War II R&D and the Takeoff of the US Innovation System

By Daniel P. Gross and Bhaven N. Sampat

American Economic Review, December 2023

During World War II, the US government's Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) supported one of the largest public investments in applied R&D in US history. Using data on all OSRD-funded invention, we show this shock had a formative impact ...

Policy-Making, Trust and the Demand for Public Services: Evidence from a Mass Sterilization Campaign

By Gianmarco León-Ciliotta, Dijana Zejcirovic, and Fernando Fernandez

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy

We study a large-scale family planning intervention in which more than 260,000 Peruvian women were sterilized. Many of these medical procedures are alleged to have been performed without patient consent. The subsequent disclosure of alleged illegal ster...

Spillover, Efficiency and Equity Effects of Regional Firm Subsidies

By Sebastian Siegloch, Nils Wehrhöfer, and Tobias Etzel

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy

We analyze the effects of a large place-based policy, subsidizing up to 50% of the investment costs of manufacturing plants in East Germany. We show that a one-percentage-point decrease in the subsidy rate leads to a 1% decrease in manufacturing employm...