I’ve been the Managing Editor of the Journal of Financial Views for the reason that first difficulty in Summer season 1987. The JEP is printed by the American Financial Affiliation, which determined again in 2011–to my delight–that the journal could be freely accessible on-line, from the present difficulty all the best way again to the primary difficulty. You possibly can obtain particular person articles or complete points, and it’s accessible in numerous e-reader codecs, too. Right here, I’ll begin with the Desk of Contents for the just-released Summer season 2024 difficulty, which within the Taylor family is named difficulty #149. Under which are abstracts and direct hyperlinks for all the papers. I plan to weblog extra particularly about a few of the papers within the few weeks, as nicely.
______________
Symposium: The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017
“Sweeping Changes and an Uncertain Legacy: The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017,” by William G. Gale, Jeffrey L. Hoopes, and Kyle Pomerleau
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) of 2017 launched sweeping adjustments to particular person and company taxation. We summarize the most important provisions, hint the origins of the Act, and examine it to earlier tax adjustments. We additionally look at the results on the federal government funds, financial exercise, and distribution of sources. Based mostly on proof via 2019, we discover that the TCJA clearly raised federal debt and elevated after-tax incomes, disproportionately rising incomes for essentially the most prosperous. Its results on GDP and median wages appear modest at finest, though clear counterfactuals are troublesome to establish. The influence on funding is much less sure, and analysis is barely lately rising that addresses this query. Empirical evaluation of longer-term results could show troublesome as a result of disruptions created by the COVID-19 pandemic beginning in 2020.
Full-Textual content Entry | Supplementary Supplies
“The US Individual Income Tax: Recent Evolution and Evidence,” by Jon Bakija
This paper assesses the present state of the US federal particular person taxation, and considers its latest evolution, with an emphasis on the adjustments to the person revenue tax enacted within the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), and proof on their impacts. How has the design of the tax modified, and the way has this affected tax revenues, the distribution of tax burdens, marginal tax charges, and the breadth of the tax base? What have been the rationales for the adjustments, and what does economics should contribute to the talk over whether or not the adjustments have been a good suggestion? What have we discovered so removed from empirical analysis on the impacts of latest adjustments in particular person tax coverage, together with particularly the adjustments enacted since 2017, and what does this suggest for the optimum design of particular person taxation?
Full-Textual content Entry | Supplementary Supplies
“Lessons from the Biggest Business Tax Cut in US History,” by Gabriel Chodorow-Reich, Owen Zidar, and Eric Zwick
We assess the enterprise provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the most important company tax reduce in US historical past. We draw 5 classes. First, company tax income fell by 40 % as a result of decrease fee and extra beneficiant expensing. Second, corporations with bigger declines of their efficient tax wedge elevated funding comparatively extra. In combination, we advise a free consensus from the literature that whole tangible company funding elevated by 11 %. Third, the enterprise tax provisions elevated financial progress and wages by lower than marketed by the Act’s proponents, with long-run GDP greater by lower than 1 % and labor revenue by lower than $1,000 per worker. Fourth, provisions that enhance overseas funding by US-based multinationals additionally enhance their home operations. Fifth, a few of the expired and expiring provisions, reminiscent of accelerated depreciation, generate extra funding per greenback of tax income than others.
Full-Textual content Entry | Supplementary Supplies
“US International Corporate Taxation after the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act,” by Kimberly A. Clausing
The foundation dilemma that informs the previous, current, and way forward for US worldwide taxation is the stress between two desiderata: defending the company tax base from erosion and guaranteeing the competitiveness of US multinational corporations on this planet economic system. This text begins by exploring that rigidity, discussing the proof behind these competing coverage objectives. It then considers the worldwide tax provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. TCJA enacted transformative adjustments in US company tax coverage, but it surely didn’t resolve lengthy held coverage issues. Whereas analysis on TCJA is in early levels, proof signifies that TCJA considerably diminished company tax revenues, that TCJA’s worldwide provisions (as an entire) raised much less income than anticipated, that offshoring and revenue shifting stay giant coverage issues, that adjustments in US multinational firm competitiveness have been combined, and that underlying tendencies in wages and funding didn’t change on account of TCJA. Whereas TCJA was unable to resolve the stress between competitiveness and tax base safety, the Pillar 2 worldwide tax settlement reveals extra promise in that regard. As nations all through the world implement a “country-by-country” minimal tax on multinational revenue of 15 %, this has the potential to disrupt long-standing arguments about worldwide company taxation.
Full-Textual content Entry | Supplementary Supplies
“Are Opportunity Zones an Effective Place-Based Policy?,” by Kevin Corinth and Naomi Feldman
We consider the Alternative Zones provision of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, specializing in its concentrating on and results on funding and resident outcomes. The coverage allowed substantial discretion for state governors to designate Alternative Zones that weren’t essentially essentially the most distressed, although we discover that in combination their final alternatives have been nonetheless considerably well-targeted. Nonetheless, we present that the coverage is inadequate to encourage funding with a considerably below-market fee of return and supplies the biggest tax advantages to funding that will have occurred whatever the coverage. In keeping with these options of the coverage’s design, a considerable quantity of Alternative Zone funding has been made, together with in lots of lower-income areas. Nonetheless, it seems that a lot of the funding would have occurred anyway, and the proof thus far largely factors to restricted results on resident wellbeing.
Full-Textual content Entry | Supplementary Supplies
Symposium: Increasing the Attraction of Economics
“Seeking the “Missing Women” of Economics with the Undergraduate Girls in Economics Problem,” by Tatyana Avilova and Claudia Goldin
Economics is among the many hottest undergraduate majors, particularly in prime schools and universities. Nonetheless, even at the very best analysis universities and liberal arts schools males outnumber ladies by two to 1, and general there are about 2.5 males to each feminine economics main. We talk about why ladies main in economics lower than males and describe a venture to extend the variety of feminine economics majors. The Undergraduate Girls in Economics (UWE) Problem was a randomized managed trial, with 20 remedy and 68 management colleges, that we ran for one 12 months in AY 2015–16 to judge the influence of light-touch interventions to recruit and retain feminine economics majors. Therapy colleges obtained funding, steerage, and entry to networking with different remedy colleges to implement applications reminiscent of offering higher data to incoming college students concerning the software of economics, exposing college students to function fashions, offering mentoring, and updating course content material and pedagogy. Utilizing 2001–2021 knowledge from the NCES-Built-in Postsecondary Schooling Information System (IPEDS) on graduating undergraduates (BAs), we discover that UWE was efficient in rising the fraction of feminine BAs who majored in economics relative to males in liberal arts schools. Giant universities didn’t present an influence of the remedy, though those who carried out their very own RCTs confirmed reasonable success in encouraging extra ladies to main in economics. We talk about what we imagine labored within the UWE program and speculate on the explanations for differential remedy influence.
Full-Textual content Entry | Supplementary Supplies
“Valuing Identity in the Classroom: What Economics Can Learn from Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education,” by Sergio Barrera, Susan Sajadi, Marionette Holmes, and Sarah Jacobson
Economics faces cussed underrepresentation of minoritized id teams. Economics instructors additionally largely use antiquated educational strategies. We leverage the literature from the fields of science, expertise, engineering, and arithmetic schooling, which have rigorously studied educational methods and gathered proof on a wide range of strategies that enhance studying and cut back demographic gaps. We talk about 4 broad concepts: energetic and collaborative studying, function mannequin interventions, modernized design of assessments and suggestions, and culturally related, responsive, and sustaining pedagogy. We body these approaches within the context of economics id, share proof concerning efficacy, and provides examples of how the methods have been and can be utilized in economics. In so doing, we offer a set of adjustments economics instructors could make, giant and small, to enhance their instructing for all college students and to scale back demographic gaps in success and persistence within the subject.
Full-Textual content Entry | Supplementary Supplies
“Lessons for Expanding the Share of Disadvantaged Students in Economics from the AEA Summer Program at Michigan State University,” by Lisa D. Cook dinner and Christine Moser
Since 1974, the American Financial Affiliation Summer season Coaching Program has offered coaching and mentoring to college students from deprived backgrounds in economics. The goal of this system is to encourage and put together these college students to use to PhD applications in economics and in the end to extend range within the career. This system has been hosted by completely different universities through the years. This paper supplies insights and classes discovered from this system’s tenure at Michigan State College from 2016 to 2020. Along with discussing the construction and outcomes of this system, we offer recommendation to college students, college, and potential hosts who could also be within the AEA Summer season Program or comparable applications.
Full-Textual content Entry | Supplementary Supplies
Articles
“What Went Wrong with Federal Student Loans?” by Adam Looney and Constantine Yannelis
At a time when the returns to varsity and graduate college are at historic highs, why achieve this many college students battle with their pupil loans? The rise in combination pupil debt and the struggles of as we speak’s pupil mortgage debtors could be traced to adjustments in federal insurance policies supposed to broaden entry to federal support and academic alternatives, and which elevated enrollment and borrowing in higher-risk circumstances. Beginning within the late Nineteen Nineties, policymakers weakened rules that had constrained establishments from enrolling aid-dependent college students. This led to rising enrollment of comparatively deprived college students, however primarily at poor-performing, low-value establishments whose college students systematically failed to finish a level, struggled to repay their loans, defaulted at excessive charges, and foundered within the job market. As these new debtors skilled equally poor outcomes, their loans piled up, mortgage efficiency deteriorated, and with it the funds of the federal program. The disaster illustrates the necessary function that academic establishments play in entry to postsecondary schooling and pupil outcomes, and problem of utilizing broadly-available loans to subsidize investments in schooling when there may be a lot heterogeneity in outcomes throughout establishments and applications and within the means to repay of scholars.
Full-Textual content Entry | Supplementary Supplies
“On the Economics of Extinction and Possible Mass Extinctions,” by M. Scott Taylor and Rolf Weder
Human beings’ domination of the planet has not been sort to many species. That is to be anticipated. People have radically altered pure landscapes, harvested closely from the ocean, and altered the local weather in an unprecedented means. Current issues over the extent and fee of biodiversity loss have led to renewed curiosity in extinction outcomes and hypothesis regarding people’ potential function in any future mass extinction. On this paper, we talk about the financial causes of extinction in two high-profile instances—sharks and the North American Buffalo—after which prolong our evaluation to a number of species and talk about the potential of mass extinction. All through, we current proof drawn from authoritative knowledge sources with a deal with shark populations to floor our evaluation. Regardless of giant gaps in our knowledge, the accessible proof reveals a worrisome pattern: extinction dangers are rising for a lot of species and policymakers have been very sluggish to react.
Full-Textual content Entry | Supplementary Supplies
“Recommendations for Further Reading,” by Timothy Taylor
