Identifying behavioral responses to tax reforms: New insights and a new approach

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Jakobsen, Katrine Marie; Sogaard, Jakob Egholt
• 署名单位: University of Oxford; University of Copenhagen
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2022.104691
• 发表日期: 2022
• 关键词: Tax reforms; behavioral responses; identification; validation

摘要

We revisit the identification of behavioral responses to tax reforms and develop a new approach for graphical validation and representation of treatment effects. We show that the standard estimation strategy relies on an assumption of constant trend differentials. In the context of income taxation, this implies that differences in income trends across the income distribution should remain constant in the absence of tax reforms. Similar to pre-trend validation of differences-in-differences studies, we can validate this assumption by comparing the evolution of income in untreated parts of the income distribution. We illustrate our new approach by studying several tax reforms in Denmark. (JEL: C14 H30 J22). (c) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).