Working Papers

New: Optimal Tax Audits using Predictions, with Aviv Caspi, Jacob Goldin, and Daniel E. Ho.
-Slides.

Newly Revised: The Welfare Economics of Reference Dependence, with Arthur Seibold.
—Slides

The Offshore World According to FATCA, with Niels Johannesen, Max Risch, Joel Slemrod, John Guyton, and Patrick Langetieg. Accepted, Tax Policy and the Economy 2023.
—Slides.

Tax Evasion at the Top of the Income Distribution: Theory and Evidence, with John Guyton, Patrick Langetieg, Max Risch and Gabriel Zucman.
—Appendix
—Summary by Max, Gabriel and myself for the Washington Center for Equitable Growth
—Response to a comment by Auten and Splinter
—Press: Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg , Marketplace, Fortune, LA Times, Yahoo Finance, NYTimes, Washington Post, ProMarket
—Problem set question based on the model (comments welcome!)
—Companion methods paper by the same authors: “The Distribution of Undetected Under-Reported Income Identified by Detection-Controlled Estimation Methods”

Peer-Reviewed Publications

Retirement Consumption and Pension Design, with Jonas Kolsrud, Camille Landais, and Johannes Spinnewijn. 2024. American Economic Review 114(1): 89-133.
—Read more here: VoxEU
—AER version (gated)
—Slides.

Public Disclosure of Tax Information: Compliance Tool or Social Network?, with Joel Slemrod and Trine Engh Vattø. 2022. Journal of Public Economics 212: 1-22.

Optimal Defaults with Normative Ambiguity, with Jacob Goldin. 2022. Review of Economics and Statistics 104(1): 17-33. Online Appendix.
Winner: International Institute of Public Finance Young Economists Award, 2018.

Who Sells During a Crash? Evidence from Tax Return Data on Daily Sales of Stock, with Jeffrey Hoopes, Stefan Nagel, Patrick Langetieg, Joel Slemrod, and Bryan Stuart. Economic Journal 132(1): 299-325.
Read more here: Bloomberg, The Atlantic, Fortune, Time, The Independent

Taxing Hidden Wealth: The Consequences of U.S. Enforcement Initiatives for Evasive Foreign Accounts, with Niels Johannesen, Patrick Langetieg, Max Risch, and Joel Slemrod. 2020. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 12(3): 312-46. Online Appendix.
Read more here: AEA website

Revealed Preference Analysis with Framing Effects, with Jacob Goldin. 2020.  Journal of Political Economy 126(7): 2759-95. Online Appendix.
*Note: This work was previously circulated under "Preference Identification Under Inconsistent Choice."

Do Lower Minimum Wages for Young Workers Raise their Employment? Evidence from a Danish Discontinuity, with Claus Kreiner and Peer Skov.  2020. Review of Economics and Statistics 102(2): 339-354.
Read more here: Marginal Revolution

The Analysis of Survey Data with Framing Effects, with Jacob Goldin. 2018. The American Statistician 73(3): 264-272. Appendix.

Does Credit-Card Information Reporting Improve Small-Business Tax Compliance? with Joel Slemrod, Brett Collins, Jeffrey Hoopes, and Michael Sebastiani. 2017.  Journal of Public Economics, 149: 1-19.

Taxpayer Search for Information: Implications for Rational Attention, with Jeffrey Hoopes and Joel Slemrod. 2015. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 7 (3): 177-208. 
Read more here: AEA website

Liminal Papers

Intrapersonal Comparisons as Interpersonal Comparisons, with Canishk Naik.
*This is early stage work in progress. Here are some slides on the basic idea, from my talk at IIPF 2023.

Taxes and Mistakes: What's in a Sufficient Statistic? 
*This is a theoretical paper on tax mis-perceptions and tax salience that I wrote in grad school. What I did here was well covered by subsequent literature on the topic, so at this point it’s more a “resting paper.” Those seeking to familiarize themselves with the theory of tax salience might find it useful. Here is a problem set question I use to teach tax salience, which is based on this work.

Diminishing Marginal Utility Revisited, with Miles Kimball, Fumio Ohtake, Yoshiro Tsutsui, and Fudong Zhang.

Other Academic Writing

Different From You and Me: Tax Enforcement and Sophisticated Tax Evasion by the Wealthy, with Jeanne Bomare. LSE Public Policy Review, 2(4): 6, pp. 1-17.

Rationalizations and Mistakes: Optimal Policy with Normative Ambiguity, with Jacob Goldin. 2018. American Economic Association Papers and Proceedings, 148: 98-102.

Less Academic Writing

“Are Lockdowns Taxes?” in the Economics Observatory. Some thoughts on the application of textbook public economics to the question of lockdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic.

In 2014, Emily Clader and I taught a workshop on mathematics and creative writing at 826Michigan. Our lesson plan was published as "Infinite Recess" in 826National's STEM to Story: Enthralling and Effective Lesson Plans for Grades 5-8. Read more about it at poets.org.