COURSE OUTLINE

TAX POLICY FALL SEMESTER 2015

Niels Johannesen
Preliminary version - 12 August 2015
1. Tax incidence
Tax incidence in partial equilibrium (Salanie, 2011, section 2.1)
Measuring the incidence of gas taxes (Doyle and Samphanthrak, JPubE, 2008)
Measuring tax incidence through capitalization (Rosen, JPE, 1982)
Incidence of mandated benefits (Gruber, AER, 1994)
2. Taxes and economic efficiency
The efficiency loss of taxation (Salanie, 2011, section 1.2 + Notes)
The elasticity of taxable income (Feldstein, Restat, 1999)
Estimating behavioral responses with bunching methods (Saez, AEJPol, 2010)
3. Tax salience
The empirical importance of tax salience (Chetty, Looney and Kroft, AER, 2009)
Implications for tax incidence and efficiency (Chetty, Looney and Kroft, AER, 2009)
The political economy of tax salience (Finkelstein, QJE, 2009)
The complexity of the tax system (Abeler and Jger, AEJPol, 2015)
4. Commodity taxation
Single-person Ramsey-rule (Salanie, 2011, section 3.1)
Many-person Ramsey rule
Productive efficiency (Salanie, 2011, section 3.2)
5. Paternalism
Optimal paternalism (ODonoghue and Rabin, AER, 2003)
Cigarette taxes (Gruber and Mullainathan, BEJEAP, 2005)
6. Income taxation
Introduction to optimal income taxation (Salanie, 2011, section 4.1)
Optimal top marginal tax rate (Diamond and Saez, JEP, 2011)
Optimal non-linear income tax (Diamond and Saez, JEP, 2011)
Optimal income transfers (Saez, QJE, 2002 + Salanie, 2011, chapter 9)
Tagging (Kleven and Kreiner, 2003, section 4; Mankiw and Weinzierl, AEJpol, 2010)
7. Firm taxation
Dividend taxation (Chetty and Saez, AEJpol, 2010; Chetty and Saez, QJE, 2005)
International taxation and tax competition (Keen and Konrad, 2013)
8. Evasion and enforcement
Domestic tax evasion and third-party reporting (Kleven et al, ECMA, 2011; Hindricks and Myles
chapter 16)
Offshore tax evasion and tax havens (Johannesen and Zucman, AEJpol, 2014)