Pub Date : 2025-11-20DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105537
Ian Sapollnik , Dustin Swonder
This paper measures the effects of state corporate and personal income tax reforms on business entry using an event study research design. We focus on reforms that do not coincide with federal tax changes, are preceded and followed by stable tax policy, and substantially change tax burdens. Corporate tax reforms cause meaningful changes in business entry: we measure a 5-year elasticity of 2.7 with respect to the net-of-tax rate. This is driven by large effects of tax cuts. Corporate tax cuts also reduce the predicted growth potential of entrants. We do not find strong evidence of cross-border spillovers, and find no evidence that personal income tax reforms affect business entry.
{"title":"Tax policy and business entry","authors":"Ian Sapollnik , Dustin Swonder","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105537","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105537","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper measures the effects of state corporate and personal income tax reforms on business entry using an event study research design. We focus on reforms that do not coincide with federal tax changes, are preceded and followed by stable tax policy, and substantially change tax burdens. Corporate tax reforms cause meaningful changes in business entry: we measure a 5-year elasticity of 2.7 with respect to the net-of-tax rate. This is driven by large effects of tax cuts. Corporate tax cuts also reduce the predicted growth potential of entrants. We do not find strong evidence of cross-border spillovers, and find no evidence that personal income tax reforms affect business entry.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"252 ","pages":"Article 105537"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2025-11-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145569598","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-11-19DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105521
Jesús Fernández-Villaverde , Carlos Sanz
Over the last two decades, a new generation of right-wing parties and leaders has emerged worldwide. A central question is how substitutable voters perceive these parties to be relative to the classical right. We address this question using a quasi-natural experiment from Spain’s 2023 general election. Due to a last-minute candidate withdrawal, the radical right (Vox) could not run in one constituency. This unexpected event, unrelated to economic or ideological fundamentals, allows us to estimate the effects of radical right parties on electoral outcomes. Using a synthetic difference-in-differences design, we find that the classical right captured 82.9 % of the radical right vote. The radical right’s absence also slightly increased the vote share for left-wing parties and nearly doubled protest voting. These effects are stronger in high-unemployment areas, suggesting that the classical and radical right are less likely to be viewed as substitutes there. Additional analyses using survey data corroborate our findings.
{"title":"How substitutable are the classical and radical right?","authors":"Jesús Fernández-Villaverde , Carlos Sanz","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105521","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105521","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Over the last two decades, a new generation of right-wing parties and leaders has emerged worldwide. A central question is how substitutable voters perceive these parties to be relative to the classical right. We address this question using a quasi-natural experiment from Spain’s 2023 general election. Due to a last-minute candidate withdrawal, the radical right (Vox) could not run in one constituency. This unexpected event, unrelated to economic or ideological fundamentals, allows us to estimate the effects of radical right parties on electoral outcomes. Using a synthetic difference-in-differences design, we find that the classical right captured 82.9 % of the radical right vote. The radical right’s absence also slightly increased the vote share for left-wing parties and nearly doubled protest voting. These effects are stronger in high-unemployment areas, suggesting that the classical and radical right are less likely to be viewed as substitutes there. Additional analyses using survey data corroborate our findings.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"252 ","pages":"Article 105521"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2025-11-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145569666","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-11-19DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105520
Agata Maida , Andrea Weber
In developed countries, the absence of family friendly workplace policies is seen as an important driver of low fertility rates. In this paper we examine whether the introduction of gender quota on boards of directors indirectly lead to an increase in fertility and improvements of careers of young mothers working in companies subject to the quota. We exploit the introduction of an Italian law mandating a strict gender quota on the boards of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in 2013 and leverage matched administrative data on firms and employees from 2008 to 2019. Using a triple-difference-in-differences design, we show that the law substantially increased female board representation. But we find no significant effects on fertility proxied by mandatory maternity leaves, post-childbirth retention, parental leave uptake, or wage penalties following maternity. Overall, the results suggest that while gender quotas successfully diversify leadership, they do not, in isolation, transform workplace practices or mitigate structural disadvantages faced by working mothers.
{"title":"Do gender board quotas matter for working mothers? Evidence from state-owned firms in Italy","authors":"Agata Maida , Andrea Weber","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105520","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105520","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In developed countries, the absence of family friendly workplace policies is seen as an important driver of low fertility rates. In this paper we examine whether the introduction of gender quota on boards of directors indirectly lead to an increase in fertility and improvements of careers of young mothers working in companies subject to the quota. We exploit the introduction of an Italian law mandating a strict gender quota on the boards of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in 2013 and leverage matched administrative data on firms and employees from 2008 to 2019. Using a triple-difference-in-differences design, we show that the law substantially increased female board representation. But we find no significant effects on fertility proxied by mandatory maternity leaves, post-childbirth retention, parental leave uptake, or wage penalties following maternity. Overall, the results suggest that while gender quotas successfully diversify leadership, they do not, in isolation, transform workplace practices or mitigate structural disadvantages faced by working mothers.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"252 ","pages":"Article 105520"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2025-11-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145569595","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The opioid crisis has often been fueled by its simultaneous interaction with both medical and illicit markets, including “pill mills” that distribute legal substances in inappropriate and quasi-legal ways. Pain management clinic laws (PMCLs) aim to address this property by enforcing stricter regulatory licensing requirements and regulatory oversight on opioid prescribing establishments. Using a difference-in-differences framework and Medicare claims data, we find that PMCLs reduce problematic opioid prescribing and doctor shopping. Drawing on transaction-level information on opioid shipments, we estimate that PMCLs lead to strikingly large reductions in the volume of opioids dispensed directly by practitioners to patients. Studying mortality data, we estimate reductions in overdose death rates involving prescription opioids, with little evidence of substitution to illicit opioid markets. As PMCLs have not been adopted in most states, our results suggest they warrant greater attention from policymakers, even amid the declining role of prescription opioids in the annual death toll of the opioid crisis.
{"title":"Regulating quasi-legal markets: Evidence from pain management clinic laws","authors":"Yuji Mizushima , David Powell , Rahi Abouk , Cheryl Damberg","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105515","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105515","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The opioid crisis has often been fueled by its simultaneous interaction with both medical and illicit markets, including “pill mills” that distribute legal substances in inappropriate and quasi-legal ways. Pain management clinic laws (PMCLs) aim to address this property by enforcing stricter regulatory licensing requirements and regulatory oversight on opioid prescribing establishments. Using a difference-in-differences framework and Medicare claims data, we find that PMCLs reduce problematic opioid prescribing and doctor shopping. Drawing on transaction-level information on opioid shipments, we estimate that PMCLs lead to strikingly large reductions in the volume of opioids dispensed directly by practitioners to patients. Studying mortality data, we estimate reductions in overdose death rates involving prescription opioids, with little evidence of substitution to illicit opioid markets. As PMCLs have not been adopted in most states, our results suggest they warrant greater attention from policymakers, even amid the declining role of prescription opioids in the annual death toll of the opioid crisis.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"252 ","pages":"Article 105515"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2025-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145569599","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-11-17DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105523
Michael Gelman , Zachary Orlando , Dhiren Patki
We study how unexpected delays in periodic payments affect spending behavior. Our empirical approach uses transaction-level data on income and spending and exploits quasi-random delays in the receipt of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits. Spending drops by about half of the loss in income that occurs while individuals wait for UI benefits, revealing the value of periodic payments for liquidity-constrained individuals. Once delayed payments are received as lump sums, individuals reallocate spending toward less commonly purchased big-ticket categories that are dominated by durables.
{"title":"The impact of unexpected delays in periodic payments on consumption","authors":"Michael Gelman , Zachary Orlando , Dhiren Patki","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105523","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105523","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We study how unexpected delays in periodic payments affect spending behavior. Our empirical approach uses transaction-level data on income and spending and exploits quasi-random delays in the receipt of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits. Spending drops by about half of the loss in income that occurs while individuals wait for UI benefits, revealing the value of periodic payments for liquidity-constrained individuals. Once delayed payments are received as lump sums, individuals reallocate spending toward less commonly purchased big-ticket categories that are dominated by durables.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"252 ","pages":"Article 105523"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2025-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145569596","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-11-11DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105512
Jennifer Blouin , Leslie Robinson
Given the perception that multinational enterprises (MNEs) engage in extensive tax planning, ending base erosion and profit shifting activity is a priority on many national agendas. Yet the actual level of such activity is subject to debate. In this paper, we provide guidance on how to accurately measure country-level MNE income using the datasets commonly used in research on profit shifting. This issue is of global concern, as any economic data that reports profits by jurisdiction must use an established accounting method to report the activity of the MNEs’ indirectly owned foreign affiliates. We explain how the accounting method could lead a researcher to double count income or to attribute it to the wrong jurisdiction. Such errors not only affect measures of the MNEs’ country-level profits, but also bias researchers’ estimates of the sensitivity of income to taxes. Although we focus our analysis on data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), we illustrate the consequences of such mismeasurement across a variety of studies relying on a variety of data sources.
{"title":"Accounting for the profits of multinational enterprises: Double counting and misattribution of foreign affiliate income","authors":"Jennifer Blouin , Leslie Robinson","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105512","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105512","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Given the perception that multinational enterprises (MNEs) engage in extensive tax planning, ending base erosion and profit shifting activity is a priority on many national agendas. Yet the actual level of such activity is subject to debate. In this paper, we provide guidance on how to accurately measure country-level MNE income using the datasets commonly used in research on profit shifting. This issue is of global concern, as any economic data that reports profits by jurisdiction must use an established accounting method to report the activity of the MNEs’ indirectly owned foreign affiliates. We explain how the accounting method could lead a researcher to double count income or to attribute it to the wrong jurisdiction. Such errors not only affect measures of the MNEs’ country-level profits, but also bias researchers’ estimates of the sensitivity of income to taxes. Although we focus our analysis on data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), we illustrate the consequences of such mismeasurement across a variety of studies relying on a variety of data sources.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"252 ","pages":"Article 105512"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2025-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145520903","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-11-11DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105499
Kyle Coombs
Interpersonal gifts and loans play an underexplored informal insurance role in high-income countries, posing challenges for social insurance policy design. I examine informal support via person-to-person (P2P) payment platforms using a survey-linked administrative bank transaction dataset covering low-income US users with job loss. Event study estimates show average monthly P2P inflows increase by 1.1 % of lost income one month after job loss before returning to baseline over 10 months. Single mothers receive the largest increases, as do those with high prior earnings or those living in high-income areas. Exploiting three plausibly exogenous changes to federal pandemic UI policy, I estimate that an additional dollar of UI benefits crowds out at most $0.05 of informal transfers. These results imply that UI can raise welfare by pooling risk across networks without reducing within-network risk pooling through informal insurance.
{"title":"Crowding out crowd support? Substitution between formal and informal insurance","authors":"Kyle Coombs","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105499","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105499","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Interpersonal gifts and loans play an underexplored informal insurance role in high-income countries, posing challenges for social insurance policy design. I examine informal support via person-to-person (P2P) payment platforms using a survey-linked administrative bank transaction dataset covering low-income US users with job loss. Event study estimates show average monthly P2P inflows increase by 1.1 % of lost income one month after job loss before returning to baseline over 10 months. Single mothers receive the largest increases, as do those with high prior earnings or those living in high-income areas. Exploiting three plausibly exogenous changes to federal pandemic UI policy, I estimate that an additional dollar of UI benefits crowds out at most $0.05 of informal transfers. These results imply that UI can raise welfare by pooling risk across networks without reducing within-network risk pooling through informal insurance.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"252 ","pages":"Article 105499"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2025-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145520902","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-11-10DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105516
Matthew O. Jackson , Agathe Pernoud
We examine the optimal regulation of financial networks with debt interdependencies between financial firms. We first show that firms often have incentives to choose excessively risky portfolios and to overly correlate their portfolios with those of their counterparties. We then characterize how optimal regulation depends on a firm’s financial centrality and its available investment opportunities. In standard core–periphery networks, optimal regulation depends non-monotonically on the correlation of banks’ investments, with maximal restrictions at intermediate levels of correlation. Moreover, it can be uniquely optimal to treat banks asymmetrically—restricting the investments of one core bank while allowing an otherwise identical core bank (identical in all aspects, including network centrality) to invest freely.
{"title":"Optimal regulation and investment incentives in financial networks","authors":"Matthew O. Jackson , Agathe Pernoud","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105516","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105516","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We examine the optimal regulation of financial networks with debt interdependencies between financial firms. We first show that firms often have incentives to choose excessively risky portfolios and to overly correlate their portfolios with those of their counterparties. We then characterize how optimal regulation depends on a firm’s financial centrality and its available investment opportunities. In standard core–periphery networks, optimal regulation depends non-monotonically on the correlation of banks’ investments, with maximal restrictions at intermediate levels of correlation. Moreover, it can be uniquely optimal to treat banks asymmetrically—restricting the investments of one core bank while allowing an otherwise identical core bank (identical in all aspects, including network centrality) to invest freely.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"252 ","pages":"Article 105516"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2025-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145520904","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We examine China’s Ecological Compensation Initiative (ECI), which facilitates cross-provincial payments to reduce pollution in the Xin’an River. Using firm-level data, we find the policy significantly reduced upstream emissions, especially among firms closer to the river’s boundary. The ECI also increased firm exits and reduced new entries. A cost-benefit analysis shows that both upstream and downstream provinces benefited, as did the central government, supporting the ECI’s long-term feasibility and durability. Evidence from similar later programs highlights the ECI’s broader relevance, suggesting that well-designed compensation schemes can effectively address cross-jurisdictional environmental externalities.
{"title":"Combating cross-border externalities: Evidence from China’s inter-provincial ecological compensation initiatives","authors":"Shiyi Chen , Joshua Graff-Zivin , Huanhuan Wang , Jiaxin Xiong","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105495","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105495","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We examine China’s Ecological Compensation Initiative (ECI), which facilitates cross-provincial payments to reduce pollution in the Xin’an River. Using firm-level data, we find the policy significantly reduced upstream emissions, especially among firms closer to the river’s boundary. The ECI also increased firm exits and reduced new entries. A cost-benefit analysis shows that both upstream and downstream provinces benefited, as did the central government, supporting the ECI’s long-term feasibility and durability. Evidence from similar later programs highlights the ECI’s broader relevance, suggesting that well-designed compensation schemes can effectively address cross-jurisdictional environmental externalities.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"252 ","pages":"Article 105495"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2025-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145520905","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-11-06DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105517
Pedro Brinca , Miguel Faria-e-Castro , Miguel H. Ferreira , Hans A. Holter , Valter Nóbrega
We argue that the fiscal multiplier of government purchases increases with the size of the spending shock: more expansionary government spending shocks generate larger multipliers and more contractionary shocks generate smaller multipliers. We empirically document this pattern across time, countries, and modes of financing. We propose a neoclassical mechanism that hinges on the relationship between fiscal shocks, their form of financing, and the response of labor supply across the wealth distribution. An incomplete markets model predicts that the aggregate labor supply elasticity increases with the spending shock, and this holds regardless of whether shocks are deficit- or balanced-budget financed. We show that this mechanism survives the introduction of nominal price rigidities and find evidence for it using micro-data for the US.
{"title":"The nonlinear effects of fiscal policy","authors":"Pedro Brinca , Miguel Faria-e-Castro , Miguel H. Ferreira , Hans A. Holter , Valter Nóbrega","doi":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105517","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105517","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We argue that the fiscal multiplier of government purchases increases with the size of the spending shock: more expansionary government spending shocks generate larger multipliers and more contractionary shocks generate smaller multipliers. We empirically document this pattern across time, countries, and modes of financing. We propose a neoclassical mechanism that hinges on the relationship between fiscal shocks, their form of financing, and the response of labor supply across the wealth distribution. An incomplete markets model predicts that the aggregate labor supply elasticity increases with the spending shock, and this holds regardless of whether shocks are deficit- or balanced-budget financed. We show that this mechanism survives the introduction of nominal price rigidities and find evidence for it using micro-data for the US.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48436,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economics","volume":"252 ","pages":"Article 105517"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2025-11-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145468936","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}