Mental Health Consequences of Correctional Sentencing

By Manudeep Bhuller, Laura Khoury, and Katrine V. Løken

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2025

Understanding whether and in what situations correctional sentencing improves or exacerbates defendants' mental health conditions is important for the design of criminal justice policies. We combine detailed Norwegian data on visits to health care profess...

Electronic Payment Technology and Tax Compliance: Evidence from Uruguay's Financial Inclusion Reform

By Anne Brockmeyer and Magaly Sáenz Somarriba

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2025

Does the digitization of transactions in an economy increase tax compliance? We study the effect of financial incentives on the adoption of electronic payment technology and on tax compliance by firms. Exploiting administrative data and policy variation f...

Who Bears the Burden of Local Taxes?

By Marius Brülhart, Jayson Danton, Raphaël Parchet, and Jörg Schläpfer

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2025

We study the distributional effects of local taxes. They turn out to be strikingly progressive. We calibrate a municipality-level structural model with quasi-experimental estimates of taxpayer mobility by family type. Households with children are found to...

The Negative Consequences of Loss-Framed Performance Incentives

By Lamar Pierce, Alex Rees-Jones, and Charlotte Blank

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2025

Behavioral economists have proposed that incentive contracts result in higher productivity when bonuses are "loss framed"—prepaid then clawed back if targets are unmet. We test this claim by randomizing the pre- or postpayment of sales bonuses at 294 ca...

Profit Taxation, R&D Spending, and Innovation

By Andreas Lichter, Max Löffler, Ingo E. Isphording, Thu-Van Nguyen, Felix Poege, and Sebastian Siegloch

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2025

We study how profit taxes affect establishments' R&D activities. Relying on detailed panel data of R&D-active firms in Germany over two decades, we exploit identifying variation induced by more than 10,000 municipal changes in the local business tax rate ...

Uncharted Waters: Effects of Maritime Emission Regulation

By Jamie Hansen-Lewis and Michelle Marcus

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2025

Maritime shipping emits as much fine particulate matter as half of global road traffic. We are the first to measure the consequences of US maritime emissions standards on air quality, human health, racial exposure disparities, and behavior. The introducti...

Spillover, Efficiency, and Equity Effects of Regional Firm Subsidies

By Sebastian Siegloch, Nils Wehrhöfer, and Tobias Etzel

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2025

We analyze the effects of a large place-based policy, subsidizing up to 50 percent of the investment costs of East German manufacturing plants. We show that a 1 percentage point decrease in subsidy rate leads to a 1 percent decrease in manufacturing emplo...

My Taxes Are Too Darn High: Why Do Households Protest Their Taxes?

By Brad Nathan, Ricardo Perez-Truglia, and Alejandro Zentner

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2025

In the United States and globally, taxpayers can file a protest to legally reduce their property taxes. While tax protests can provide a unique opportunity to study the (un)willingness to pay taxes, they have received little attention from researchers. Us...

The Impact of Provider Payments on Health Care Utilization of Low-Income Individuals: Evidence from Medicare and Medicaid

By Marika Cabral, Colleen Carey, and Sarah Miller

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2025

Provider payments are the key determinant of insurance generosity within many health insurance programs covering low-income populations. This paper analyzes a large, federally mandated provider payment increase for primary care services provided to low-in...

Effective Health Aid: Evidence from Gavi's Vaccine Program

By Gauri Kartini Shastry and Daniel L. Tortorice

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2025

Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance has provided over US$16 billion in funding for vaccination in low- and middle-income countries since 1999. We exploit differential timing across countries and vaccines to estimate the effects of this public health initiative. We...

Policymaking, Trust, and the Demand for Public Services: Evidence from a Mass Sterilization Campaign

By Gianmarco León-Ciliotta ⓡ Dijana Zejcirovic ⓡ Fernando Fernandez

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2025

We study a large-scale family planning intervention in which more than 260,000 Peruvian women were sterilized. Many of these medical procedures are alleged to have been performed without patient consent. The subsequent disclosure of alleged illegal steril...

Anya Kleymenova on financial innovation

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How do sustainable lending practices spur financial innovation?

Arseniy Braslavskiy on the flypaper effect

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How does federal spending on public transit affect state and local investment?

Crystal Zhan on LGBTQ curriculum laws

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Do LGBTQ curriculum laws influence where parents send their children to school?

Fabiano Dal-Ri on managerial talent

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What skills are most important for starting a business?

Rebecca Mari on flooding and the economy

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How do floods impact GDP and inflation?

Saeed Zaman on disaggregating CPI measures

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What is the optimal level of disaggregation for median and trimmed-mean CPI?

Sarah Akyena on the Earned Income Tax Credit

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Does the Earned Income Tax Credit cause occupational skill mismatch?

Catriona Farquharson on eviction policies

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How much do eviction moratoria impact rents?

2025 AEA Recent Developments Lectures

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