Can a country reduce its exposure to tax havens, and what are the implications? Ecuador introduced a business income tax surcharge for firms with terminal owners from tax havens, a reform made possible by the establishment of a business ownership registry. We compare the behavior of firms with tax haven owners at baseline, versus other foreign-owned firms: the reform induced 12 percent of haven-owned firms to report terminal owners outside havens, and the new owners are persons rather than firms, thus raising beneficial ownership transparency. Moreover, exposed firms increase tax payments in Ecuador by 17%, without any impact on employment and limited effects on investment. We find that the policy combining a “flashlight” (the ownership registry) and a “stick” (the tax surcharge) raised transparency and reduced tax erosion at limited efficiency cost.

We examine the role of paid tax preparers in tax optimization of individual tax- payers. First, using the universe of annual personal income tax returns in the US from 2011-2020, we provide novel descriptive evidence characterizing the paid tax preparers and the users of their services. Second, we develop new measures of tax optimization and quantify the effects of paid preparers on tax optimization, leveraging the rotation of clients among preparers. Our findings suggest that one standard deviation better tax preparers reduce the effective tax rates of their clients by 0.5 percentage points, on average, with better tax preparers offering larger reductions and charging higher fees. The size of tax savings in levels and as a share of gross income also increases in income taxpayer rank. We further find that tax preparers who are better at lowering their clients’ tax obligation are also suspected more frequently of under-reporting by the tax authorities. Our results highlight the significant role that paid tax preparers play in shaping post-tax income disparities.

I study the impact of an Ecuadorian outflows tax on the reported income and personal income tax payments of individuals connected to tax havens. I identify Ecuadorian tax haven users from the Panama Papers and connect them to administrative data on annual earnings, cross-border transactions, and on beneficial ownership of businesses. I produce new descriptive evidence on tax haven users, finding that haven usage is highly serially correlated within individuals over time. The 5% outflows tax induced exposed individuals to increase their taxable income by 40% (20,000 USD) compared to unexposed high-earning taxpayers and pay 60% more in personal income taxes (PIT). This response was concentrated within the highest earners in the Ecuadorian population and resulted in an aggregate increase in annual PIT collections by around 4%. I characterize mechanisms and find that the increase in taxable income was driven by increases in independent labor and capital income as well as wage income flows. Corroborating this response, I document 1) an increase in labor payouts of the companies owned by exposed individuals, 2) a decrease in their outflows to tax havens, and 3) an increase in their inflows from tax havens. These results are consistent with a lasting reduction in offshore tax evasion and suggest that countries can indeed act unilaterally to mitigate tax haven use and increase tax collections.

We evaluate the existence of the pink tax: the hypothesized price premium on women's consumer goods. Using retail and grocery scanner data, we find that women pay 5.1% more for consumer packaged goods in the same product-by-location market. This price differential is generated by women paying 21.2% higher average prices for explicitly gendered products, like personal care items, and 4.8% higher average prices for ungendered products, like food items. We study the mechanisms driving these differences by estimating gender differences in price elasticities, market structures, wholesale prices charged to retailers, and marginal costs of production. When we directly observe wholesale prices for a subset of goods, we find that women's goods feature lower markups than do those of men. We estimate product quality using a constant elasticity of substitution model of demand; we find that women are consistently more price elastic than are men and that women's consumer goods are valuated at 25% higher quality than ungendered goods within the same market. Finally, we estimate marginal costs using a differentiated products demand model within the disposable razors market and arrive at similar conclusions: within producer, women's razors see higher marginal costs and lower markups. The pink tax is not sustained by higher markups, but by women sorting into goods with higher marginal costs. This finding implies that legislation aimed at eliminating gender differential pricing will not substantially ameliorate gender-differential costs of living and may drive product exit.

We leverage variation in the timing of unconditional housing recipiency by homeless individuals in Los Angeles County to determine the effects of housing on their employment, earnings, and benefits absorption. We validate our event study approach by demonstrating a parallel trends assumption and that wait times are unrelated to homelessness severity. We find that placement into 2-year Rapid Re-Housing increases extensive-margin employment by 55% from a 20pp baseline. Individuals that made unemployment-to-employment and employment-to-employment transitions exhibited earnings increases of USD 1000 and USD 250 per month, respectively, while exhibiting no change in benefits absorption. Permanent Supportive Housing recipients exhibited no substantial change in labor market outcomes around their placement into housing, but we do observe a decrease in their reported labor-search behavior. We argue that these differences between programmatic outcomes speak to differences in targeting rather than treatment. We perform a simple cost-benefit calculation based on impacts on labor market outcomes and pecuniary benefits, and find that because most recipients are still unemployed or in a low-earning job post-event, the cost-offset through increased earnings alone is near-zero.

I study the first instance of federal funding to the arts in the US via New Deal programming ($4 billion present-day) to evaluate the long-run impact of artist employment programs on artist population shares of cities. I employ a New Deal spending instrument in an instrumental variables differences-in-differences design. The program increased shares of writers, theater/film workers, and designers (10-30 artists per 10,000 people) enduring to the present-day in a ``big-push'' manner. Musicians saw increases that lasted 1-2 decades. A variance decomposition demonstrates modest explanatory power (5-15%) of the program in determining subsequent variation of artist shares across cities.

I study how charitable contributions reported by nonprofit entities respond to variation in the federal and state estate tax rate. I focus on the asymmetric response by nonprofit vehicle type to changes in federal and state estate tax policy since 2002— distinguishing between private charities and public charities and between family foundations and non-familial private foundations. I find that private foundations respond between 2.5 and 5 times as strongly as public charities in response to variation in the top estate tax rate, exhibiting reported contributions elasticities of around 2.5 for changes in the federal estate tax and around .5 for same-state-level reforms. I also document a significant positive (negative) relationship between private foundation entry (exit) and estate tax rates. I document no significant difference in response between familial and non-familial foundations. Finally, I show that private foundations feature greater opacity in terms of their charitability objectives, demonstrate higher propensity to engage in self-benefiting transactions, and allocate greater shares of their expenses to administrative activities. This work demonstrates that the well-documented positive relationship between charitable bequests and estate taxation is largely driven by private foundations whose activity is associated with greater measures of private benefit.

We study panhandling in Downtown Manhattan. Surprisingly few people panhandle there at any given moment: about 8–10 people on average at a busy time, in a small area with an economy the size of Latvia's. The redevelopment of Ground Zero and the resulting surge in economic activity—including the opening of North America's tallest building—changed where panhandlers operated within the neighborhood, but did not significantly increase panhandling overall. The response was muted because the labor supply of panhandlers appears to be inelastic. On the other hand, good places to panhandle are relatively abundant. Hence the benefits of the boom in economic activity accrued mainly to incumbent panhandlers themselves; as would the benefits of greater donor generosity.

What does wise public policy toward panhandling look like? When a willing, reasonably well informed donor gives money to a panhandler, both are better off, and inequality goes down. Policy should encourage transactions like this. When a pedestrian is upset by a panhandler’s presence, does not give, and maybe even alters course, no one is better off and at least one person is worse off. Policy should discourage this kind of interaction. We examine an array of programs to deal with panhandling to see how well they encourage welfare-improving interactions and discourage welfare-reducing ones. Tentatively, credentialing programs are the most promising.