The standard model of strategic tax competition assumes that government policymakers are perfectly benevolent, acting solely to maximize the utility of the representative resident in their jurisdiction. We depart from this assumption by allowing for the possibility that policymakers also may be...

Dramatic declines in capital tax rates among U.S. states and European countries have been linked by many commentators to tax competition and an inevitable "race to the bottom." This paper provides an empirical analysis of the reaction of capital tax policy in a given U.S. state to changes in...

This paper studies the effects of job creation tax credits (JCTCs) enacted by U.S. states between 1990 and 2007 to gain insights about fiscal foresight (alterations of current behavior by forwardlooking agents in anticipation of future policy changes). Nearly half of the states adopted JCTCs...

This paper reviews selected fiscal policy initiatives undertaken by US states to encourage job creation and innovation. We begin with a discussion of some general considerations about the design of tax policies summarized in a tax policy design table. Four policies are reviewed: job creation tax...

We study the conditions under which fiscal foresight - forward-looking agents anticipating future policy changes - results in perverse economic behavior through unintended intertemporal tradeoffs. Somewhat surprisingly, fiscal foresight by itself is far from sufficient for policy-induced...

Rising income inequality since the 1980s in the United States has generated a substantial increase in saving by the top of the income distribution, which we call the saving glut of the rich. The saving glut of the rich has been as large as the global saving glut, and it has not been associated...

We propose a theory of indebted demand, capturing the idea that large debt burdens by households and governments lower aggregate demand, and thus natural interest rates. At the core of the theory is the simple yet under-appreciated observation that borrowers and savers differ in their marginal...