{"title":"Taxing the online haven: Impacts of the EU VAT reform on cross-border e-commerce","authors":"Chao Fang , Shuzhong Ma","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2024.105244","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2024.105244","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>To reduce tax losses online, starting from July 2021, the EU mandates value-added tax (VAT) payment for all imported small parcels and requires platforms to collect and remit tax. Using data from China Customs and orders from an AliExpress store, we document that due to the reform, China’s online exports to EU countries dropped by nearly 50% and EU consumers mostly bore the increased tax burden instead of online sellers. Furthermore, there was a decrease in orders previously exempted from VAT and those previously required to pay VAT upon delivery, with the former showing a greater reduction. This study demonstrates that while the EU reform has improved online tax compliance, it has negatively affected consumers to a great extent.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"239 ","pages":"Article 105244"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2024-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142423880","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The economic consequences of being widowed by war: A life-cycle perspective","authors":"Sebastian T. Braun , Jan Stuhler","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2024.105241","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2024.105241","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Despite millions of war widows worldwide, little is known about the economic consequences of being widowed by war. We use life history data from West Germany to show that war widowhood increased women’s employment immediately after World War II but led to lower employment rates later in life. War widows, therefore, carried a double burden of employment and childcare while their children were young but left the workforce when their children reached adulthood. We show that the design of compensation policies likely explains this counterintuitive life-cycle pattern and examine potential spillovers to the next generation.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"239 ","pages":"Article 105241"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2024-10-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142423879","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Patricia Gil , Justin Holz , John A. List , Andrew Simon , Alejandro Zentner
{"title":"Toward an understanding of tax amnesty take-up: Evidence from a natural field experiment","authors":"Patricia Gil , Justin Holz , John A. List , Andrew Simon , Alejandro Zentner","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2024.105245","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2024.105245","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Governments often use partial forgiveness policy to induce debt repayments and increase the disclosure of hidden debts. While ubiquitous, much remains unknown about how well these amnesties work, for whom, and why. We partnered with the Dominican Republic Tax Authority to design a natural field experiment to understand whether, and what types of, nudges can increase amnesty take-up and repayment. Our field experiment, which covers 125,452 taxpayers collectively owing 5.5% of GDP in known debt, tests the impact of messages from the tax authority during an amnesty that highlight deterrence laws, beliefs about future amnesties, and tax morale messages for debt payment and disclosure. Importantly, we find large short-run effects – our most effective treatment increased payments of known debt by 25% and hidden debt by 48% – that are only slightly undone by reductions in subsequent tax payments.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"239 ","pages":"Article 105245"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2024-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142423878","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Michael Levere , Jeffrey Hemmeter , David Wittenburg
{"title":"The importance of schools in driving children’s applications for disability benefits","authors":"Michael Levere , Jeffrey Hemmeter , David Wittenburg","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2024.105239","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2024.105239","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We explore how schools affect children’s applications to Supplemental Security Income (SSI). Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, schools varied in offering virtual or in-person learning during the 2020–21 school year. We use this variation to better understand the way schools, potentially through teacher referrals and informal networks, influence SSI applications. We find that applications were nearly 20 percent lower in counties with virtual learning relative to counties where all learning was in-person. Subgroup analysis suggests that school staff, likely through offering identification and referral services, and informal networks were mechanisms contributing to these differentials.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"239 ","pages":"Article 105239"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2024-10-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142423876","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Consumption tax cuts vs stimulus payments","authors":"Mehdi Bartal , Yvan Becard","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2024.105227","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2024.105227","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Recent work shows that in macroeconomic models with non-Ricardian consumer behavior, uniform transfers are equivalent to interest rate cuts. That is, policymakers can use stimulus payments to substitute for conventional monetary policy when, say, the zero lower bound on short-term rates binds. We argue that in the same class of models, temporarily reducing consumption taxes delivers more stimulus than transfers — at the same cost to the taxpayer. Consumption tax cuts activate both income and substitution channels and prompt a strong response from all consumers across the wealth distribution. Simulating these policies in a quantitative heterogeneous agent New Keynesian model, we find output expands twice as much.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"239 ","pages":"Article 105227"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2024-10-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142423877","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Matias Busso , Sebastián Montaño , Juan Muñoz-Morales , Nolan G. Pope
{"title":"The unintended consequences of merit-based teacher selection: Evidence from a large-scale reform in Colombia","authors":"Matias Busso , Sebastián Montaño , Juan Muñoz-Morales , Nolan G. Pope","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2024.105238","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2024.105238","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Teacher quality is a key factor in improving student academic achievement. As such, educational policymakers strive to design systems to hire the most effective teachers. This paper examines the effects of a national policy reform in Colombia that established a merit-based teacher-hiring system intended to enhance teacher quality and improve student learning. Implemented in 2005 for all public schools, the policy ties teacher-hiring decisions to candidates’ performance on an exam evaluating subject-specific knowledge and teaching aptitude. The implementation of the policy led to many experienced contract teachers being replaced by high exam-performing novice teachers. We find that though the policy sharply increased pre-college test scores of teachers, it also decreased the overall stock of teacher experience and led to sharp decreases in students’ exam performance and educational attainment. Using a difference-in-differences strategy to compare the outcomes of students from public and private schools over two decades, we show that the hiring reform decreased students’ performance on high school exit exams by 8 percent of a standard deviation, and reduced the likelihood that students enroll in and graduate from college by more than 10 percent. The results underscore that relying exclusively on specific ex ante measures of teacher quality to screen candidates, particularly at the expense of teacher experience, may unintentionally reduce students’ learning gains.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"239 ","pages":"Article 105238"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2024-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142359044","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
John C. Haltiwanger , Mark J. Kutzbach , Giordano Palloni , Henry O. Pollakowski , Matthew Staiger , Daniel H. Weinberg
{"title":"The children of HOPE VI demolitions: National evidence on labor market outcomes","authors":"John C. Haltiwanger , Mark J. Kutzbach , Giordano Palloni , Henry O. Pollakowski , Matthew Staiger , Daniel H. Weinberg","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2024.105188","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2024.105188","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We combine national administrative data on earnings and participation in subsidized housing to investigate how the demolition of 160 public housing projects—funded by the HOPE VI Demolition program—affected adult labor market outcomes for 18,500 children. Our empirical strategy compares children exposed to the program between ages 10 and 18 to children drawn from thousands of non-demolished projects, adjusting for observable differences using a flexible estimator that combines features of matching and regression. We find that children who resided in HOPE VI projects earn 15 percent more at age 26 relative to children in comparison projects. Earnings gains are greatest for demolitions in high-poverty neighborhoods in large cities, the context for most prior research on HOPE VI. However, most HOPE VI projects were in smaller cities where we find weaker effects that are not statistically significant. We investigate pathways including improved parental earnings, childhood exposure to lower poverty neighborhoods, and greater job accessibility. We find the strongest evidence for improved job accessibility facilitating increased employment and earnings for young adults.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"239 ","pages":"Article 105188"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2024-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142327055","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Race-blind admissions, school segregation, and student outcomes","authors":"Jason Cook","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2024.105237","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2024.105237","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In 2007, the Supreme Court declared race-conscious school admissions unconstitutional. This paper provides the first evaluation of a related federal mandate where the Columbus City School District was forced to adopt a race-blind lottery system for its magnet schools. I explore the impact of the dramatic increase in racial segregation resulting from the mandate. More segregated schools spend less per-pupil, enroll lower achieving students, employ lower value-added teachers, and perpetuate “White flight” out of the district. Ultimately, segregation arising from mandated race-blind admissions causes student achievement and college attendance rates to decline.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"239 ","pages":"Article 105237"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2024-09-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142323670","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Should I Stay (in School) or Should I Go (to Work)","authors":"Lee Tyrrell-Hendry","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2024.105226","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2024.105226","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>I explore optimal education subsidies and progressivity of labour taxes in a model with stochastic human capital accumulation and incomplete markets, endogenous labour supply and an education choice modelled as a real option, where agents choose an optimal number of years to study before starting work. In a purely analytical Baseline model with tight borrowing constraints on students, which leads to a no-trade equilibrium without savings, the government pays for education via transfers to students or – equivalently – via grants to universities. The social welfare-maximising policy features generous education subsidies and highly progressive labour taxes, much more so than currently seen in the US or Europe, and results in an average consumption-equivalent gain of 8%. This result is robust to myriad extensions, including a Quantitative model with relaxed financial frictions where students can borrow to finance their education, and where hence the equilibrium features extensive precautionary saving by workers.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"239 ","pages":"Article 105226"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2024-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142318629","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The impossible trinity: Competitive markets, free entry, and efficiency","authors":"Halvor Mehlum , Gisle J. Natvik , Ragnar Torvik","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2024.105240","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2024.105240","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We present a model in which workers make occupational choices and vote over a tax rate which determines the level of government spending. Workers in occupations whose services are in high (low) demand by the government favor high (low) taxes. We show that the socially efficient size of the public sector cannot be supported in a political economic equilibrium. The reason is that equilibrium tax rates always reward excessive entry into the politically most powerful sector, and thus the equilibrium size of government is always either too big or too small. We show that this is an example of a more general political economy result that extends well beyond the baseline model and holds quite generally: the combination of (i) competitive markets and (ii) free entry is inconsistent with (iii) allocative efficiency.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"239 ","pages":"Article 105240"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2024-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142318628","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}