Work in Progress
Identifying Preference Heterogeneity for Better Tax Instruments
Abstract: Standard demand estimation cannot distinguish whether high earners consume differently because preferences are nonhomothetic (everyone buys more luxury goods as income rises) or because high earners have fundamentally different tastes. I develop a panel-data method that separately identifies these channels by exploiting within-household income and spending variation over time—and I quantify them using the PSID data. The distinction is key for tax policy: if tastes vary systematically with ability, commodity taxes can improve welfare beyond what income taxes can achieve alone.
Form vs. Function: Organization and Real Outcomes in U.S. Businesses
Abstract: In the U.S., even large firms with many owners can choose to avoid any firm-level tax via partnership or S-corp election—and increasingly, they do. I study whether this choice of tax form affects real production outcomes at the establishment and "firm" level, using quasi-random policy variation from the 1997 Check-the-Box reform and staggered state adoption of LLC statutes. The paper asks: when firms switch organizational form, does anything real change, or is it just relabeling? I explore mechanisms including changes in state-level governance, and internal reallocation across sub-entities and physical establishments.
Tagging Through the Market: Optimal Taxation with Home Production (with Jacob Goldin)
Abstract: Home-produced goods and services—childcare, cleaning, meal preparation—cannot be observed or taxed by the government. The Ramsey tradition has long noted that this creates distortions favoring home over market production. We revisit this question using the Mirrleesian approach to commodity taxation developed by Saez (2002), asking: when should market services be taxed or subsidized given a home production alternative? We characterize how the answer depends on preference structure and the home production technology—primitives that are testable with time-use and expenditure data.
Visible and Invisible Need: Disability as a Tax Signal
Abstract: Disability signals need and likely warrants redistribution beyond earnings replacement—but some conditions are easy to verify, others nearly impossible. This observability gap should drive tax policy, yet the current code is haphazard: a deduction for blindness, nothing for equally costly chronic pain. I develop a framework for when different tax instruments are appropriate and explore how standard rationales for commodity taxation interact in the disability setting. Using health-augmented Nielsen consumption panel data, I estimate how disability shapes consumption patterns and propose concrete reforms.