Author Archives: RTGoffice

Title: “Taxing Wealth and Capital Income when Returns are Heterogeneous” Abstract: When is a wealth tax preferable to a capital income tax? We study this question theoretically in a perpetual youth model with entrepreneurs and workers, in which entrepreneurial firms are subject to idiosyncratic productivity shocks and collateral constraints. We focus on the steady state equilibrium that...

Title: “The Downward Spiral” Abstract: There have been more than 500,000 opioid overdose deaths since 2000. To analyze the opioid epidemic, a model is constructed where individuals, with and without pain, choose whether to misuse opioids knowing the probabilities of addiction and dying. These odds are functions of opioid use. Markov chains are estimated from the US data for the college a...

Title: “Late Bloomers? The Causes and Consequences of Graduating from College Later in Life” Abstract: It is a well-known fact that the college share in advanced countries has been increasing in the past several decades. This is generally attributed to the cohort succession model; whereby successive cohorts obtain more education. Despite this consensus, using a shift-share decomposition...

Topic: “Tax and Transfer Progressivity at the US State Level” Abstract: Combining a variety of survey and administrative data, this paper measures the progressivity of taxes and transfers for each of the US states and contrasts it to progressivity at the federal level. Our findings are fourfold: (i) the tax and transfer system is progressive at the federal level; (ii) state and local tax...

Topic: "How Have You Found Your Job? Effects of the Job Search Channels on Labour Market Outcomes in Germany" Abstract: The most popular method to acquire a job is to use one’s circle of acquaintances or socialnetworks to find a position. However, in the current research, there is still no clear conclusionif this job search method has positive implications for different job outcomes such...

Topic: "The Macroeconomic Consequences of Exchange Rate Depreciations" Abstract: We study the consequences of “regime-induced” exchange rate depreciations by comparing outcomes for peggers versus floaters to the US dollar in response to a dollar depreciation. Pegger currencies depreciate relative to floater currencies and these depreciations are strongly expansionary. The boom is not as...

Topic: "Shopping Frictions and Household Heterogeneity: Theory and Empirics" Abstract: This paper shows that price dispersion matters for shaping individual household consumption. Using detailed scanner data, I document that the high-earning employees pay from 2 to 7% higher prices than the low-earning ones for exactly the same or very similar goods. The causal link between the income level...

Topic: "HOW DO GASOLINE PRICES RESPOND TO A COST SHOCK?" Abstract: In a broad class of sticky price models, theory predicts that the ratio of the kurtosis to the frequency of price changes is a sufficient statistic for the cumulative impulse response of prices (CIRP) to a nominal shock. Using several millions of daily gasoline prices in France, we provide supporting evidence of this predicti...

Topic: "Assortative Mating and Wealth Inequality" Abstract:We use population data on capital income and wealth holdings for Norway to measure asset positions and wealth returns before individuals marry and after the household is formed. These data allow us to establish a number of novel facts. First, individuals sort on personal wealth rather than parents' wealth. Assortative mating on own wea...