Macroeconomic calibrations imply much larger labor supply elasticities than microeconometric studies. One prominent explanation for this divergence is that indivisible labor generates extensive margin responses that are not captured in micro studies of hours choices. We evaluate whether existing...

This paper characterizes the welfare gains from redistributive taxation and social insurance in an environment where the private sector provides partial insurance. We analyze stylized models in which adverse selection, pre-existing information, or imperfect optimization in private insurance...

The debate between structural and reduced-form approaches has generated substantial controversy in applied economics. This article reviews a recent literature in public economics that combines the advantages of reduced-form strategies—transparent and credible identification—with an...

Martin Feldstein's (1999) widely used taxable income formula for deadweight loss assumes the marginal social cost of evasion and avoidance equals the tax rate. This condition is likely to be violated in practice for two reasons. First, some of the costs of evasion and avoidance are transfers to...

How can price elasticities be identified when agents face optimization frictions such as adjustment costs or inattention? I derive bounds on structural price elasticities that are a function of the observed effect of a price change on demand, the size of the price change, and the degree of...

"In this paper, we review the literature on the "spike" in unemployment exit rates around benefit exhaustion, and present new evidence based on administrative data for a large sample of job losers in Austria. We find that the way unemployment spells are measured has a large effect on the...