COURSE OUTLINE TAX POLICY – FALL SEMESTER 2015

Niels Johannesen Preliminary version - 12 August 2015

1. Tax incidence

− Tax incidence in partial equilibrium (Salanie, 2011, section 2.1) − Measuring the incidence of gas taxes (Doyle and Samphanthrak, JPubE, 2008) − Measuring tax incidence through capitalization (Rosen, JPE, 1982) − Incidence of mandated benefits (Gruber, AER, 1994)

2. Taxes and economic efficiency

− The efficiency loss of taxation (Salanie, 2011, section 1.2 + Notes) − The elasticity of taxable income (Feldstein, Restat, 1999) − Estimating behavioral responses with bunching methods (Saez, AEJPol, 2010)

3. Tax salience

− The empirical importance of tax salience (Chetty, Looney and Kroft, AER, 2009) − Implications for tax incidence and efficiency (Chetty, Looney and Kroft, AER, 2009) − The political economy of tax salience (Finkelstein, QJE, 2009) − The complexity of the tax system (Abeler and Jäger, AEJPol, 2015)

4. Commodity taxation

− Single-person Ramsey-rule (Salanie, 2011, section 3.1) − Many-person Ramsey rule − Productive efficiency (Salanie, 2011, section 3.2)

5. Paternalism

− Optimal paternalism (O’Donoghue and Rabin, AER, 2003) − Cigarette taxes (Gruber and Mullainathan, BEJEAP, 2005)

6. Income taxation

− Introduction to optimal income taxation (Salanie, 2011, section 4.1) − Optimal top marginal tax rate (Diamond and Saez, JEP, 2011) − Optimal non-linear income tax (Diamond and Saez, JEP, 2011) − Optimal income transfers (Saez, QJE, 2002 + Salanie, 2011, chapter 9) − Tagging (Kleven and Kreiner, 2003, section 4; Mankiw and Weinzierl, AEJpol, 2010)

7. Firm taxation

− Dividend taxation (Chetty and Saez, AEJpol, 2010; Chetty and Saez, QJE, 2005) − International taxation and tax competition (Keen and Konrad, 2013)

8. Evasion and enforcement

− Domestic tax evasion and third-party reporting (Kleven et al, ECMA, 2011; Hindricks and Myles chapter 16)

− Offshore tax evasion and tax havens (Johannesen and Zucman, AEJpol, 2014)