Fall 2024
Tax Policy and Public Finance Colloquium
Tuesdays, 4:15 p.m. - 6:15 p.m., Furman Hall 310
Professor Daniel Shaviro
The Colloquium offers students the opportunity to pursue tax policy and theory, along with related issues of public economics, at an advanced level. The primary focus of the Colloquium will be papers and works in progress by scholars from around the country, including NYU faculty. Students attend the afternoon Colloquium and participate in its discussions. In addition, each week the morning seminar component examines the paper scheduled for presentation at the Colloquium, including background issues that may help in understanding it. Students must prepare a short comment paper in 3 of the 13 weeks focusing on the upcoming paper, and submit to the conveners of the Colloquium a proposed question for the author in each week (after Week 1) when they are not submitting a comment paper. In addition, each student will make brief opening comments about the paper that is being discussed at two of the six private sessions.
Daniel Shaviro
Wayne Perry Professor of Taxation
New York University
School of Law
40 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012
Telephone: (212) 998-6187
Fax: (212) 995-4341
shavirod@mercury.law.nyu.edu
http://danshaviro.blogspot.com/
September 10
Ellora Derenoncourt, Princeton University
"Wealth of Two Nations: The US Racial Wealth Gap, 1860-2020"
"Online appendix for "The racial gap, 1860-2020""
September 24
Andrew Hayashi, University of Virginia Law School
"The Federal Architecture of Income Inequality"
October 8
Manasi Deshpande, University of Chicago Economics Department
"The (Lack of) Anticipatory Effects of the Social Safety Net on Human Capital Investment"
October 22
Louis Kaplow, Harvard Law School
"Optimal Income Taxation and Charitable Giving"
November 12
Alex Zhang, Emory University School of Law
"Fiscal Citizenship and Taxpayer Privacy"
November 26
Natasha Sarin, Yale Law School
"Broken Budgeting" - For the reading materials, please email Diana Guevara at dg4480@nyu.edu.
Schedules from prior semesters:
Fall 2023 Schedule
September 12
Christine Kim, Cardozo Law School
"Taxing the Metaverse"
September 26
Rebecca Kysar, Fordham Law School
"The Global Tax Deal and the New International Economic Order"
Please contact Jasmine Buzeta for a copy at jb8429@nyu.edu.
October 10
Jeremy Bearer-Friend, George Washington Law School
"Race-Based Tax Weapons"
October 24
Kimberly Clausing, UCLA Law School
"Capital Taxation and Market Power"
November 14
Ajay Mehrotra, Northwestern Law School
"The Missing U.S. VAT: Economic Inequality, American Fiscal Exceptionalism, and the Historical U.S. Resistance to National Consumption Taxes"
November 28
Edward Fox, University of Michigan Law School
"Who Benefits from Corporate Tax Cuts? Evidence from Banks and Credit Unions around the TCJA (with Ben Pyle).
Fall 2022 Schedule
September 13
William Gale, Brookings Institution
"Rethinking the Corporate Income Tax: The Role of Rent Sharing"
September 27
Jennifer Taub, Western New England School of Law
"No Income Taxation Until Basic Accommodations: Toward Tax Justice in America"
October 11
Bridget Crawford, Pace Law School
"Pink Tax and other Tropes"
October 25
Alex Raskolnikov, Columbia Law School
"Should Only the Richest Pay More?"
November 15
Goldburn Maynard, Indiana University Kelley School of Business
"Wage Enslavement: How the Tax System Holds Back Historically Disadvantaged Groups of Americans"
"Biden's Gambit: Advancing Racial Equity While Relying on a Race-Neutral Tax Code"
November 29
Ariel Jurow Kleiman, Loyola Law School Los Angeles
"Impoverishment by Taxation"
"Asking Too Much: How American Governments Impoverish Their Own"
Fall 2021 Schedule
September 14
Jake Brooks & David Gamage
"The Indirect Tax Canon, Apportionment, and Drafting a Constitutional Wealth Tax."
September 28
Daniel Hemel
"Law and The New Dynamic Public Finance."
October 12
Jennifer Blouin
"Does Tax Planning Affect Organizational Complexity: Evidence from Check-the-Box"
October 26
Manoj Viswanathan
"Retheorizing Progressive Taxation."
November 9
Ruth Mason & Michael Knoll
"Unbundling Undue Burdens."
November 23
Mindy Herzefeld
"Defining Taxes in Economics, Accounting and Law."
November 30
Alan Auerbach
"Tax Policy Design and Low Interest Rates."
Fall 2020 Schedule
August 25
Steven Dean, NYU Law School
“A Constitutional Moment in Cross-Border Taxation.”
September 1
Clinton Wallace, University of South Carolina School of Law
“Democratic Justice in Tax Policymaking.”
September 8
Natasha Sarin, University of Pennsylvania Law School
“Understanding the Revenue Potential of Tax Compliance Investments.”
September 15
Adam Kern, Princeton Politics Department and NYU Law School
“Illusions of Justice in International Taxation.”
September 22
Henrik Kleven, Princeton Economics Department
“The EITC and the Extensive Margin: A Reappraisal.”
September 29
Leandra Lederman, Indiana University Maurer School of Law
"Of Risks and Remedies-Best Practices in Tax Rulings"
October 6
Daniel Shaviro, NYU Law School
“What Are Minimum Taxes, and Why Might One Favor or Disfavor Them?”
October 13
Gabriel Zucman, University of California, Berkeley
"The Rise of Income and Wealth Inequality in America: Evidence from Distributional Macroeconomic Accounts."
October 20
Michelle Layser, University of Illinois College of Law
“How Place-Based Tax Incentives Can Reduce Economic Inequality.”
October 27
Steve Rosenthal, Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center
Theo Burke, Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center
“Who's Left to Tax? US Taxation of Corporations and Their Shareholders.”
November 10
Owen Zidar, Princeton Economics Department
“The Tax Elasticity of Capital Gains and Revenue-Maximizing Rates.”
November 17
Abdoulaye Ndiaye, NYU Stern Business School
“Redistribution With Performance Pay.”
November 24
Lilian Faulhaber, Georgetown Law School
“Lost in Translation: Excess Returns and the Search for Substantial Activities”
December 1
Erin Scharff, Arizona State Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law
“Revisiting Local Income Taxes.”
Fall 2019 Schedule
September 3
Lily Batchelder, NYU Law
“Optimal Tax Theory as a Theory of Distributive Justice.”
September 10
Eric Zwick, University of Chicago Booth School of Business
“Top Wealth in the United States: New Estimates and Implications for Taxing the Rich.”
September 17
Diane Schanzenbach, Northwestern University School of Education and Social Policy
“Safety Net Investments in Children.”
September 24
Li Liu, International Monetary Fund
"At A Cost: the Real Effects of Transfer Pricing Regulations."
October 1
Daniel Shaviro, NYU Law
“Digital Service Taxes and the Broader Shift from Determining the Source of Income to Taxing Location-Specific Rents.”
October 8
Katherine Pratt, Loyola Law School Los Angeles
"The Curious State of Tax Deductions for Fertility Treatment Costs."
October 15
Zachary Liscow, Yale Law School
“Democratic Law and Economics."
October 22
Diane Ring, Boston College Law School
Shu-Yi Oei, Boston College Law School
“Falling Short in the Data Age.”
October 29
John Friedman, Brown University Economics Department
“Income Segregation and Intergenerational Mobility Across Colleges in the United States.”
November 5
Marc Fleurbaey, Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School
“Optimal Income Taxation Theory and Principles of Fairness.”
November 12
Stacie LaPlante, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Wisconsin School of Business
"The Effect of Intellectual Property Boxes on Innovative Activity & Effective Tax Rates."
November 19
Joseph Bankman, Stanford Law School
“Mr. Smith Gets an Education: Why it is so Hard to get Easy Tax Filing.”
November 26
Deborah Paul, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen, and Katz
“Has Helen’s Ship Sailed? A Re-Examination of the ‘Helen of Troy’ Regulations."
December 3
Joshua Blank, University of California at Irvine Law School
Ari Glogower, The Ohio State University, Moritz College of Law
"Progressive Tax Procedure."
Spring 2019 Schedule
January 22
Stefanie Stantcheva, Harvard Economics Department
"Taxation and Innovation in the 20th Century"
January 29
Rebecca Kysar, Fordham Law School
"Unraveling the Tax Treaty"
February 5
David Kamin, NYU School of Law
"The Effects of Capital Gains Rate Uncertainty on Realization"
February 12
John Roemer, Yale University Economics and Political Science Departments
“A Theory of Cooperation in Games With an Application to Market Socialism”
February 19
Susan Morse, University of Texas at Austin Law School
“Government-to-Robot Enforcement”
February 26
Ruud de Mooij, International Monetary Fund
“International Corporate Tax Avoidance: A Review of the Channels, Magnitudes, and Blind Spots”
March 5
Richard Reinhold, NYU School of Law
"Does the Parsonage Exemption in Internal Revenue Code Section 107 Violate the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment?"
March 12
Tatiana Homonoff, NYU Wagner School
“Program Recertification Costs: Evidence from SNAP”
March 26
Jeffery Hoopes, UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School
“Is Tax Planning Best Done in Private?”
April 2
Omri Marian, University of California at Irvine School of Law
“The Making of International Tax Law: Empirical Evidence from Natural Language Processing”
April 9
Steven Bank, UCLA Law School
“Manufacturing Tax Populism”
April 16
Dayanand Manoli, University of Texas at Austin Department of Economics
“Tax Enforcement and Tax Policy: Evidence on Taxpayer Responses to EITC Correspondence Audits”
April 23
Sara Sternberg Greene, Duke Law School
“A Theory of Poverty: Legal Immobility”
April 30
Wei Cui, University of British Columbia Law School
“The Digital Services Tax: A Conceptual Defense”
2018 Schedule
January 16
Greg Leiserson, Washington Center for Equitable Growth
“Removing the Free Lunch from Dynamic Scores: Reconciling the Scoring Perspective with the Optimal Tax Perspective”
January 23
Peter Dietsch, University of Montreal Philosophy Department
“Tax Competition and Global Background Justice"
January 30
Andrew Hayashi, University of Virginia Law School
“Countercyclical Tax Bases”
February 6
Gerald Auten, U.S. Treasury Department
“Income Inequality in the United States: Using Tax Data to Measure Long-Term Trends”
February 13
Vanessa Williamson, Brookings Institution
"How the Taxpaying Experience Obscures Low-Income Taxpayers and Shapes Attitudes about Progressivity”
February 27
Jacob Goldin, Stanford Law School
“Tax Benefit Complexity and Take-Up: Lessons from the Earned Income Tax Credit”
March 6
Lisa Philipps, Osgoode Hall Law School
“Gendering the Analysis of Tax Expenditures”
March 20
Lisa De Simone, Stanford Graduate School of Business
"Repatriation Taxes and Foreign Cash Holdings: The Impact of Anticipated Tax Reform"
March 27
Damon Jones, University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy
"How Do Distributions from Retirement Accounts Respond to Early Withdrawal Penalties?
Evidence from Administrative Tax Returns"
April 3
Ajay Mehrotra, American Bar Foundation and Northwestern University School of Law
“T.S. Adams and the Beginning of the Value-Added Tax”
April 10
Jason Furman, Harvard Kennedy School
“Should Policymakers Care Whether Inequality Is Helpful or Harmful For Growth?”
April 17
Emily Satterthwaite, University of Toronto Law School
“Electing into a Value-Added Tax: Survey Evidence from Ontario Micro-Entrepreneurs”
April 24
Wolfgang Schon, Max Planck Institute
“Taxation and Democracy”
May 1
Mitchell Kane, NYU Law
"International Tax Reform, the Tragedy of the Tax Commons, and Bilateral Tax Treaties"
2017 Schedule
January 23
Lily Batchelder, New York University School of Law
"Accounting for Behavioral Biases in Business Tax Reform: The Case of Expensing"
January 30
Mark Gergen, Berkeley Law School
"How to Tax Global Capital"
February 6
Alan Auerbach, Berkeley Economics Department
"U.S. Inequality, Fiscal Progressivity, and Work Disincentives: An Intra-generational Accounting"
February 13
Allison Christians, McGill Law School.
"Human Rights at the Borders of Tax Sovereignty"
February 21
Jason Oh, UCLA Law School
"Are the Rich Responsible for Progressive Marginal Rates?"
February 27
Steven Shay, Harvard Law School
"A Better Way' Tax Reform: Theory and Practice"
March 6
Scott Dyreng, Duke Business School
"Trade-offs in the Repatriation of Foreign Earnings"
March 20
Daniel Hemel, University of Chicago Law School.
"Federalism as a Safeguard of Progressive Taxation"
March 27
Leonard Burman, Urban Institute
"Is U.S. Corporate Income Double-Taxed?"
April 3
Kathleen Delaney Thomas, University of North Carolina Law School
"The Taxing the Gig Economy"
April 10
Julie Cullen, U.C. San Diego, Department of Economics
"Political Alignment and Tax Evasion"
April 17
Miranda Perry Fleischer, University of San Diego Law School
"The Libertarian Case for a Universal Basic Income"
April 24
Joel Slemrod, University of Michigan Business School
"Taxing Hidden Wealth: The Consequences of U.S. Enforcement Initiatives on Evasive Foreign Accounts"
May 1
Richard Vann, University of Sydney Law School
"International tax post-BEPS: Is the corporate tax really all that bad?"
2016 Schedule
January 19
Eric Talley, Columbia Law School
“Corporate Inversions and the Unbundling of Regulatory Competition”
January 26
Michael Simkovic, Seton Hall Law School
"The Knowledge Tax"
February 2
Lucy Martin, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Department of Political Science
“The Structure of American Income Tax Policy Preferences”
February 9
Donald Marron, Urban Institute
“Should Governments Tax Unhealthy Foods and Drinks?"
February 23
Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, University of Michigan Law School
“Evaluating BEPS”
March 1
Kevin S. Markle, University of Iowa Business School
"The Effect of Financial Constraints on Income Shifting by U.S. Multinationals"
March 8 – Theodore Seto, Loyola Law School, Los Angeles
“Preference-Shifting and the Nonfalsifiability of Optimal Tax Theory”
March 22
James Kwak, University of Connecticut School of Law
“Reducing Inequality With a Retrospective Tax on Capital”
March 29
Miranda Stewart, The Australian National University
“Transnational Tax Law: Fiction or Reality, Future or Now?"
April 5
Danny Yagan, University of California at Berkeley Economics Department
"Partnerships in the United States: Who Owns Them and How Much Tax Do They Pay?"
April 12
Lily Kahng, Seattle University School of Law
“Who Owns Human Capital?”
April 19
James Alm, Tulane Economics Department, and Jay Soled, Rutgers Business School
“Whither the Tax Gap?”
April 26
Jane Gravelle, Congressional Research Service
“Policy Options to Address Corporate Profit Shifting: Carrots or Sticks?”
May 3
Monica Prasad, Northwestern University Department of Sociology
“The Popular Origins of Neoliberalism in the Reagan Tax Cut of 1981”
2015 Schedule
January 20
Brigitte Madrian, Harvard Kennedy School
"Does Front-Loading Taxation Increase Savings?
Evidence from Roth 401(k) Introductions"
January 27
David Kamin, NYU School of Law
"In Good Times and Bad: Designing Legislation That
Responds to Fiscal Uncertainty"
February 3
Kimberly Blanchard, Weil, Gotshal & Manges
"The Tax Significance of Legal Personality: A U.S. View"
February 10
Eric Toder, Urban Institute
"Lessons the United States Can Learn from other Countries' Territorial
Systems for Taxing Income of Multi-National Corporations"
February 24
Linda Sugin, Fordham Law School
"Invisible Taxpayers"
March 3
Ruth Mason, University of Virginia Law School
"Citizenship Taxation"
March 10
George Yin, University of Virginia Law School
"Protecting Taxpayers from Congressional Lawbreaking"
March 24
Leigh Osofsky, University of Miami School of Law
"The Case for Categorical Nonenforcement"
March 31
Shu-Yi Oei, Tulane Law School
"Can Sharing Be Taxed?"
April 7
Lillian Mills, University of Texas Business School
"Managerial Characteristics and Corporate Taxes"
April 14
Lawrence Zelenak, Duke University School of Law
"For Better And Worse: The Differing Income Tax Treatments
of Marriage at Different Income Levels"
April 21
David Albouy, University of Illinois Economics Department
"Should we be taxed out of our Homes? The Optimal Taxation of
Housing Consumption"
April 28
David Schizer, Columbia Law School
"Energy Tax Expenditures: Worthy Goals, Competing Priorities, and
Flawed Institutional Design"
May 5
Gregg Polsky, University of North Carolina School of Law
“A Compendium of Private Equity Tax Games”
2014 Schedule
January 21
Saul Levmore, University of Chicago Law School
From Helmets to Savings and Inheritance Taxes: Regulatory Intensity, Information Revelation and Internalities
Internality Regulation Through Public Choice (Background Paper)
January 28
Fadi Shaheen, Rutgers-Newark School of Law
The GAAP Lock-Out Effect and the Investment Behavior of Multinational Firms
February 4
Nancy Staudt, USC Gould School of Law
The Supercharged IPO
February 11
Thomas J. Brennan, Northwestern University School of Law
Smooth Retirement Accounts
Februrary 25
Chris Sanchirico, University of Pennsylvania Law School
"As American as Apple Inc.: International Tax and Ownership Nationality"
March 4
James R. Hines and Kyle D. Logue, University of Michigan Law School
"Delegating Tax"
March 11
Stephanie Sikes, Wharton School Accounting Department, University of Pennsylvania
"Cross-Country Evidence on the Relation between Capital Gains Taxes, Risk, and Expected Rates of Return."
March 25
Matthew C. Weinzierl, Harvard Business School
“Revisiting the Classical View of Benefit-Based Taxation.”
April 1
Andrew Biggs, American Enterprise Institute
“The Risk to State and Local Budgets Posed by Public Employee Pensions.”
April 8
Susannah Camic Tahk, University of Wisconsin Law School
“The Tax War on Poverty.”
April 15
Nirupama Rao, NYU Wagner School
"The Price of Liquor is Too Damn High: State Facilitated Collusion and the Implications for Taxes.”
April 22
Kimberly Clausing, Reed College Economics Department
“Lessons for International Tax Reform from the U.S. State Experience under Formulary Apportionment.”
April 29
David Gamage, Berkeley Law School
“A Framework for Analyzing the Optimal Choice of Tax Instruments.”
May 6
Mitchell Kane, NYU Law School
“Transfer Pricing, Integration and Novel Intangibles: A Consensus Approach to the Arm's Length Standard.”
2013 Schedule
(All sessions meet on Tuesdays from 4-5:50 pm in Vanderbilt 208, NYU Law School)
January 22
David Kamin, NYU School of Law
"Are We There Yet?: On a Path to Closing America's Long-Run Deficit"
January 29
Edward McCaffery, USC Law School
"Bifurcation Blues: The Problems of Leaving Redistribution Aside"
February 5
Jake Brooks, Georgetown Law School
"Taxation, Risk and Portfolio Choice: The Treatment of Returns to Risk Under a Normative Income Tax"
February 12
Lilian Faulhaber, Boston University School of Law
"Charitable Giving, Tax Expenditures and the Fiscal Future of the European Union"
February 26
Peter Diamond, MIT Economics Department
"The Case for a Progressive Tax: From Basic Research to Policy Recommendations"
March 5
Darien Shanske, University of California at Hastings College of Law
"Modernizing the Property Tax"
March 12
Dhammika Dharmapala, University of Illinois Law School
"Competitive Neutrality Among Debt-Financed Multi-national Firms"
March 26
Leslie Robinson, Tuck Business School at Dartmouth College
"Internal Ownership Structures of Multinational Firms"
April 2
Alan Viard, American Enterprise Institute
"Progressive ConsumptionTaxation: The Choice of Tax Design"
April 9
Brian Galle, Boston College Law School
"Regulation from the Inside Out: Nudges and Price Instrument Theory for Internalities and Externalities"
April 16
Sarah Lawsky, University of California, Irvine School of Law
"Modeling Uncertainty in Tax Law"
April 23
Larry Bartels, Department of Political Science, Vanderbilt University
"The Class War Gets Personal: Inequality as a Political Issue in the 2012 Election"
April 30
Itai Grinberg, Georgetown Law School
"A Governance Structure to Mediate the Battle Over Taxing Offshore Accounts"
May 7
Raj Chetty, Harvard Economics Department
"Active vs. Passive Decisions and Crowd-Out in Retirement Savings Accounts: Evidence from Denmark"
