Sutirtha Bagchi

• Villanova University

Scholars have studied the relationship between land inequality, income inequality, and democracy extensively, but have reached contradictory conclusions that have resulted from competing theories and methodologies. However, despite its importance, the effects of wealth inequality on democracy have not been examined empirically. We use a panel datas...

This paper examines Act 32 of the Pennsylvania state legislature which mandated the introduction of withholding for the local earned income tax (EIT) for all employees and the consolidation of a fragmented collection system to one collector per county effective January 1, 2012. The estimates I obtain suggest that the act resulted in increased compl...

This paper examines the impact of introducing withholding of the personal income tax by state governments in the U.S. We exploit the staggered adoption of withholding by individual states over the period 1948–1987 to construct event study estimates. We obtain a robust finding: Introducing withholding led to an immediate and permanent increase in in...

In Pennsylvania local property taxes are collected by elected officials, known as tax collectors, whose compensation varies widely in both structure and level across municipalities. This paper analyses the existence of a pay-performance relationship for these officials. Using data on the percentage of property taxes that are actually collected at t...

We provide evidence that political pressure creates incentives for defined benefit pension plans to use higher discount rates, thus artificially reducing the reported cost of these benefit promises. We generate our inferences using a unique panel dataset for all local pension plans from Pennsylvania for 2003–2013, and by comparing the differential...

In politically competitive jurisdictions, there can be strong electoral incentives to underfund public pensions in order to keep current taxes low. I examine this hypothesis using panel data for over 2,000 local pension plans from Pennsylvania spanning the period 1985–2017. The results suggest that more politically competitive municipalities tend t...

In politically competitive jurisdictions, there can be strong electoral incentives to increase the generosity of public pensions and simultaneously, to not fund them fully, in order to keep taxes low. I examine the relationship between political competition and generosity of public pensions using a panel dataset for 3000 local plans from Pennsylvan...

We construct a global panel data set to examine the relationship between monetary growth and wealth inequality. Dynamic panel estimates suggest that both overall and inherited wealth inequality increase with growth in the base money supply. These results hold for countries with at least one billionaire and for OECD countries.

Despite the growing interest in understanding the effects of income inequality on economic growth, the influence of entrepreneurship-related institutional constraints on the inequality–growth association remains less understood. Drawing on an institutional constraints perspective in the context of startup entry regulation and credit constraints, we...

This paper examines the institution of taxicab medallions in two of the largest cities of the U.S.—New York and Chicago—and changes in the prices of those medallions during the period 2009–2016 (for New York City) and 2007–2016 (for Chicago). We document a drop of roughly 50% in the prices of these medallions in New York and roughly 80% in Chicago...

Between 2005 and 2008, nineteen of the fifty states of the U.S. reformed the franchising process for cable television, significantly easing entry into local markets. Using a difference-in-differences approach that exploits the staggered introduction of reforms, we find that prices for ‘Basic’ service declined systematically by about 5.5 to 6.8 per...

This paper examines the institution of taxicab medallions in two of the largest cities of the U.S.: New York and Chicago and changes in the prices of those medallions during the period 2009-2016 (for New York City) and 2007-2016 (for Chicago). We document a drop of roughly 50% in the prices of these medallions in New York and roughly 80% in Chicago...

Social scientists have grappled for decades with the key question of whether inequality in control over a society’s resources facilitates or hinders economic growth. While there is a large theoretical and empirical literature on this topic, the question is far from settled.

This article looks at whether political ideology matters for enforcement of the nation’s tax laws. An analysis of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) budget and personnel suggests that the party affiliation of the President makes no difference to the overall level of IRS resources. However, there are significant increases in the number of IRS employ...

1. Essay 1: In politically competitive jurisdictions, there can be strong electoral incentives to underfund public pensions in order to keep current taxes low. I examine this hypothesis using panel data for 2,000 municipal pension plans from Pennsylvania. The results suggest that as a municipality becomes more politically competitive, it tends to h...

A key question in social sciences relates to the effect of wealth inequality on economic growth. Yet, in analyzing this issue, researchers have had to use income as a proxy for wealth. We derive a global measure of wealth inequality from Forbes magazine’s listing of billionaires and decompose it into three components: inequality resulting from entr...

Between 2005 and 2008, 19 of the 50 states of the U.S. reformed the franchising process for cable television, signicantly easing entry into local markets. Using a difference-in-differences approach that exploits the staggered introduction of reforms, we find that prices for "Basic" service declined systematically by about 5.5 to 6.8 percent followi...

This paper looks at whether political ideology matters for enforcement of the nation’s tax laws. An analysis of the resources available to the IRS suggests that the party affiliation of the President makes no difference to the overall level of IRS resources. However, there are significant increases in the share of the IRS budget devoted to detectin...

Whereas a fundamental question is about the effect of wealth inequality on economic growth, existing studies have had to use income as a proxy for wealth. Since the distribution of wealth is more unequal than that of income, the question arises as to whether the impact of income inequality truly captures the impact of inequality in wealth. We bridg...

A fundamental question in social sciences relates to the effect of wealth inequality on economic growth. Yet, in tackling the question, researchers have had to use income as a proxy for wealth. We derive a global measure of wealth inequality from Forbes magazine’s listing of billionaires and compare its effect on growth to the effects of income ine...