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Publications (20)
We review what is known about the economic efficiency of fuel taxes relative to efficiency standards aimed at mitigating environmental externalities from cars. We present a simplified model of car choice that allows us to emphasize the relationships between fuel economy, other car attributes, and miles traveled. We focus on greenhouse gas emissions...
We document a strong correlation in the brand of automobile chosen by parents and their adult children, using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. This correlation could represent transmission of brand preferences across generations, or it could result from correlation in family characteristics that determine brand choice. We present a var...
This paper uses data from the universe of tax returns filed between 2001 and 2010 to test whether parents shift the timing of childbirth around the New Year to gain tax benefits. Filers have an incentive to shift births from early January into late December, through induction or cesarean delivery, because child-related tax benefits are not prorated...
This paper argues that it will often be rational for consumers to pay limited attention to energy efficiency when choosing among energy-consuming durable goods like automobiles or home appliances. The reason is that the proper valuation of energy efficiency requires time and effort, but differences in efficiency across products will rarely be pivot...
Policy makers have instituted a variety of fuel economy tax policies—polices that tax or subsidize new vehicle purchases on the basis of fuel economy performance—in the hopes of improving fleet fuel economy and reducing gasoline consumption. This article reviews existing policies and concludes that while they do work to improve vehicle fuel economy...
How much are people willing to forego to be honest, to follow the rules? When people do break the rules, what can standard data sources tell us about their behavior? Standard economic models of crime typically assume that individuals are indifferent to dishonesty, so that they will cheat or lie as long as the expected pecuniary benefits exceed the...
This paper analyzes the predictive power of a new data set of consumer gasoline price forecasts taken from the Michigan Survey of Consumers (MSC). MSC data generally perform as well as a no-change forecast in predicting future gasoline prices, and they substantially out-perform the no-change forecast during the recent economic crisis, during which...
This paper estimates the incidence of tax incentives for the Toyota Prius. Transaction microdata indicate that both federal and state incentives were fully captured by consumers. This is surprising because Toyota faced a binding production constraint, which suggests that they could have appropriated the gains. The paper proffers an explanation base...
A full understanding of how gasoline prices affect consumer behavior frequently requires information on how consumers forecast future gasoline prices. We provide the first evidence on the nature of these forecasts by analyzing two decades of data on gasoline price expectations from the Michigan Survey of Consumers. We find that average consumer bel...
Notches --- where small changes in behavior lead to large changes in a tax or subsidy --- figure prominently in many policies, but have been rarely examined by economists. In this paper, we analyze a class of notches associated with policies aimed at improving vehicle fuel economy. We provide several pieces of evidence showing that automakers respo...
This article discusses automobile fuel economy standards in the United States and other countries. We first describe how these programs affect the automobile market, including impacts on fuel consumption and other dimensions of the vehicle fleet. We then review two different methodologies for assessing the costs of fuel economy programs--engineerin...
This paper provides a first step toward joint evaluation of taxation and financial reporting in the standard economic analyses
of corporate behavior. It develops a framework that formalizes the idea that the attractiveness of some investment decisions
is enhanced because they provide managers with discretion over the timing of taxable income and/or...
Notches — where small changes in behavior lead to large changes in a tax or subsidy — figure prominently in many policies, but have been rarely examined by economists. In this paper, we analyze a class of notches associated with policies in the United States and Canada aimed at improving vehicle fuel economy. We provide several pieces of evidence s...
This paper demonstrates that administrative data may be inferior to survey data under particular circumstances. We examine the effect of state laws governing the minimum age of marriage in the United States. The estimated effects of these laws are much smaller when based on retrospective reports from census versus administrative records from Vital...
Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) regulations constrain automakers to produce vehicles whose average efficiency exceeds a minimum standard. A “loophole" in the program allows firms to relax this constraint by producing gasoline-ethanol flexible-fuel vehicles, which are credited with far better mileage than they actually achieve. In this paper,...
We model the social planner's decision to establish universities and populate them with students and resources, given a distribution of student ability and a limited pool of resources for higher education. If student ability and school resources are complements, and if there is a fixed cost to establishing a school, then the optimal allocation will...
The first chapter of this dissertation examines the incidence of tax credits for hybrid vehicles in the United States. A variety of state and federal tax incentives have been used to subsidize gas-electric hybrid vehicles. I estimate the incidence of these tax incentives using microdata on sales of the Toyota Prius. In order to account for heteroge...
A variety of state and federal tax incentives have been used to subsidize gas electric hybrid vehicles. In this paper, I estimate the incidence of these tax incentives using microdata on sales of the Toyota Prius, in order to determine who benefits from these policies. I focus on three sharp changes in federal subsidies stemming from the Energy Pol...
This paper models the impact of the tax system and GAAP on the real and financial reporting decisions of corporations. It provides a first step toward joint evaluation of taxation and financial reporting in the standard economic analyses of corporate behavior. The key finding is that value arises from real decisions that provide firms with discreti...
This paper investigates the response of young people in the United States to state laws dictating the minimum age at which individuals could marry, with and without parental consent. We use variation across states and over time to document behavioral responses to laws governing the age of marriage using both administrative records from the Vital St...