Recent empirical work finds that consumers under-account for commodity taxes when the after-tax price is not prominent. I investigate how policymakers may utilize such “low-salience” taxes to promote welfare. The optimal combination of high- and low-salience taxes balances two competing...

We provide survey evidence regarding taxpayer perceptions of two important tax expenditures — the charitable contribution deduction (CD) and the home mortgage interest deduction (HMID). We find that taxpayers have a flawed understanding of both programs. Taxpayers underestimate their...

A spate of new research suggests that the salience of a tax dramatically shapes taxpayer behavior: the more salient a tax — i.e., the more prominent a good's after-tax price — the more taxpayers respond. Policymakers make decisions about tax salience, whether they intend to or not, every...

The Liberty Bond drives of World War I were nation-wide interventions aimed at increasing financial literacy and associating bond ownership with patriotism. Using data from the first year of the Survey of Consumer Finances, 1947, through 1971, we investigate whether exposure to the drives shaped...

This paper studies consumer discrimination while taking into consideration the role of competition between firms, providing one of the first large-scale comprehensive analyses of consumer discrimination and market forces. We formally model consumer discrimination, where some majority-group...

We examine sorting behavior across metropolitan areas by skill over individuals' life cycles. We show that high-skill workers disproportionately sort into high-amenity areas, but do so relatively early in life. Workers of all skill levels tend to move towards lower-amenity areas during their...

The prospect for electric vehicles (EVs) as a climate change solution hinges on their widespread adoption across political lines. This paper uses county-level data to show that from 2012-2023, about half of all new EV registrations in the U.S. went to the 10% most Democratic counties. This...