Abstract The relationship between the degree of inequality and the demand for redistribution has been a central question in political science and political economy. The famous median-voter model ...predicts that higher inequality, reflected in a growing gap between the income of the average and the median voter, should lead to increased demand for redistribution, as policymakers cater to the median voter’s preferences. Yet data from Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries show that, despite increases in inequality in those countries, there was no corresponding increase in demand for redistribution. Part of the explanation of this puzzle lies in the realization that it is not only (or even mainly) reality but also perceptions that shape support for policy. This article will explore recent evidence, using large-scale social economics surveys and experiments, that sheds light on beliefs about inequality, social mobility, diversity and immigration, social position, and understanding of how policies work.
Surveys are an essential approach for eliciting otherwise invisible factors such as perceptions, knowledge and beliefs, attitudes, and reasoning. These factors are critical determinants of social, ...economic, and political outcomes. Surveys are not merely a research tool. They are also not only a way of collecting data. Instead, they involve creating the process that will generate the data. This allows the researcher to create their own identifying and controlled variation. Thanks to the rise of mobile technologies and platforms, surveys offer valuable opportunities either to study broadly representative samples or to focus on specific groups. This article offers guidance on the complete survey process, from the design of the questions and experiments to the recruitment of respondents and the collection of data to the analysis of survey responses. It covers issues related to the sampling process, selection and attrition, attention and carelessness, survey question design and measurement, response biases, and survey experiments.
Fixing capitalism’s good jobs problem Rodrik, Dani; Stantcheva, Stefanie
Oxford review of economic policy,
2021, Volume:
37, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Abstract
Conventional welfare state policies that centre on education, training, progressive taxation, and social insurance are inadequate to address labour market polarization, which is capitalism’s ...most pressing inclusion challenge at present. We propose a strategy aimed directly at the productive sphere of the economy and targeting an increase in the supply of ‘good jobs’. The main elements of this strategy are: (i) active labour market policies linked to employers; (ii) industrial and regional policies directly targeting the creation of good jobs; (iii) innovation policies that incentivize labour-friendly technologies; (iv) international economic policies that facilitate the maintenance of high domestic labour/social standards. These elements are connected both by their objective—expanding the number of good jobs—and by a new approach to regulation that is collaborative and iterative rather than top-down and prescriptive. We emphasize the importance of new institutional arrangements that enable strategic long-term information exchange and cooperation between governments and firms.
This article studies optimal linear and non-linear redistributive income taxation when there is adverse selection in the labour market. Unlike in standard taxation models, firms do not know workers' ...abilities, and competitively screen them through non-linear compensation contracts, unobservable to the government, in a Miyazaki-Wilson-Spence equilibrium. Adverse selection leads to different optimal tax formulas than in the standard Mirrlees (1971 ) model because of the use of work hours as a screening tool by firms, which for higher talent workers results in a "rat race", and for lower talent workers in informational rents and crosssubsidies. The most surprising result is that, if the government has sufficiently strong redistributive goals, welfare is higher when there is adverse selection than when there is not. Policies that endogenously affect adverse selection are discussed. The model has practical implications for the interpretation, estimation, and use of taxable income elasticities, which are central to optimal tax design.
This article analyzes the specific and critical role of trust in scientists on both the support for and compliance with nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) during the COVID-19 pandemic. We exploit ...large-scale, longitudinal, and representative surveys for 12 countries over the period from March to December 2020, and we complement the analysis with experimental data. We find that trust in scientists is the key driving force behind individual support for and compliance with NPIs and for favorable attitudes toward vaccination. The effect of trust in government is more ambiguous and tends to diminish support for and compliance with NPIs in countries where the recommendations from scientists and the government were not aligned. Trust in others also has seemingly paradoxical effects: in countries where social trust is high, the support for NPIs is low due to higher expectations that others will voluntary social distance. Our individual-level longitudinal data also allows us to evaluate the effects of within-person changes in trust over the pandemic: we show that trust levels and, in particular, trust in scientists have changed dramatically for individuals and within countries, with important subsequent effects on compliant behavior and support for NPIs. Such findings point out the challenging but critical need to maintain trust in scientists during a lasting pandemic that strains citizens and governments.
Optimal Taxation and R&D Policies Akcigit, Ufuk; Hanley, Douglas; Stantcheva, Stefanie
Econometrica,
March 2022, Volume:
90, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
We study the optimal design of corporate taxation and R&D policies as a dynamic mechanism design problem with spillovers. Firms have heterogeneous research productivity, and that research ...productivity is private information. There are non‐internalized technological spillovers across firms, but the asymmetric information prevents the government from correcting them in the first best way. We highlight that key parameters for the optimal policies are (i) the relative complementarities between observable R&D investments, unobservable R&D inputs, and firm research productivity, (ii) the dispersion and persistence of firms' research productivities, and (iii) the magnitude of technological spillovers across firms. We estimate our model using firm‐level data matched to patent data and quantify the optimal policies. In the data, high research productivity firms get disproportionately higher returns to R&D investments than lower productivity firms. Very simple innovation policies, such as linear corporate taxes combined with a nonlinear R&D subsidy—which provides lower marginal subsidies at higher R&D levels—can do almost as well as the unrestricted optimal policies. Our formulas and theoretical and numerical methods are more broadly applicable to the provision of firm incentives in dynamic settings with asymmetric information and spillovers, and to firm taxation more generally.
IMPORTANCE: Data from the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in the US show large differences in hospitalizations and mortality across race and geography. However, there are limited data on ...health information, beliefs, and behaviors that might indicate different exposure to risk. OBJECTIVE: To determine the association of sociodemographic characteristics with reported incidence, knowledge, and behavior regarding COVID-19 among US adults. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: A US national survey study was conducted from March 29 to April 13, 2020, to measure differences in knowledge, beliefs, and behavior about COVID-19. The survey oversampled COVID-19 hotspot areas. The survey was conducted electronically. The criteria for inclusion were age 18 years or older and residence in the US. Data analysis was performed in April 2020. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES: The main outcomes were incidence, knowledge, and behaviors related to COVID-19 as measured by survey response. RESULTS: The survey included 5198 individuals (mean SD age, 48 18 years; 2336 men 45%; 3759 white 72%, 830 16% African American, and 609 12% Hispanic). The largest differences in COVID-19–related knowledge and behaviors were associated with race/ethnicity, sex, and age, with African American participants, men, and people younger than 55 years showing less knowledge than other groups. African American respondents were 3.5 percentage points (95% CI, 1.5 to 5.5 percentage points; P = .001) more likely than white respondents to report being infected with COVID-19, as were men compared with women (3.2 percentage points; 95% CI, 2.0 to 4.4 percentage points; P < .001). Knowing someone who tested positive for COVID-19 was more common among African American respondents (7.2 percentage points; 95% CI, 3.4 to 10.9 percentage points; P < .001), people younger than 30 years (11.6 percentage points; 95% CI, 7.5 to 15.7 percentage points; P < .001), and people with higher incomes (coefficient on earning ≥$100 000, 12.3 percentage points; 95% CI, 8.7 to 15.8 percentage points; P < .001). Knowledge of potential fomite spread was lower among African American respondents (−9.4 percentage points; 95% CI, −13.1 to −5.7 percentage points; P < .001), Hispanic respondents (−4.8 percentage points; 95% CI, −8.9 to −0.77 percentage points; P = .02), and people younger than 30 years (−10.3 percentage points; 95% CI, −14.1 to −6.5 percentage points; P < .001). Similar gaps were found with respect to knowledge of COVID-19 symptoms and preventive behaviors. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: In this survey study of US adults, there were gaps in reported incidence of COVID-19 and knowledge regarding its spread and symptoms and social distancing behavior. More effort is needed to increase accurate information and encourage appropriate behaviors among minority communities, men, and younger people.
Abstract
This article studies the effect of corporate and personal taxes on innovation in the United States over the twentieth century. We build a panel of the universe of inventors who patented ...since 1920, and a historical state-level corporate tax database with corporate tax rates and tax base information, which we link to existing data on state-level personal income taxes and other economic outcomes. Our analysis focuses on the effect of personal and corporate income taxes on individual inventors (the micro level) and on states (the macro level), considering the quantity and quality of innovation, its location, and the share produced by the corporate rather than the noncorporate sector. We propose several identification strategies, all of which yield consistent results. We find that higher taxes negatively affect the quantity and the location of innovation, but not average innovation quality. The state-level elasticities to taxes are large and consistent with the aggregation of the individual-level responses of innovation produced and cross-state mobility. Corporate taxes tend to especially affect corporate inventors’ innovation production and cross-state mobility. Personal income taxes significantly affect the quantity of innovation overall and the mobility of inventors.
Taxation and Migration Kleven, Henrik; Landais, Camille; Muñoz, Mathilde ...
The Journal of economic perspectives,
04/2020, Volume:
34, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
In this article, we review a growing empirical literature on the effects of personal taxation on the geographic mobility of people and discuss its policy implications. We start by laying out the ...empirical challenges that prevented progress in this area and then discuss how recent work has made use of new data sources and quasi-experimental approaches to credibly estimate migration responses. This body of work has shown that certain segments of the labor market, especially high-income workers and professions with little location-specific human capital, may be quite responsive to taxes in their location decisions. When considering the implications for tax policy design, we distinguish between uncoordinated and coordinated tax policy. We highlight the importance of recognizing that mobility elasticities are not exogenous, structural parameters. They can vary greatly depending on the population being analyzed, the size of the tax jurisdiction, the extent of tax policy coordination, and a range of non-tax policies. While migration responses add to the efficiency costs of redistributing income, we caution against over-using the recent evidence of (sizeable) mobility responses to taxes as an argument for less redistribution in a globalized world.
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