Abstract: We use administrative tax data from 17 developed and developing countries to calculate the within-country corporate elasticity of taxable income (ETI) and investigate differences between these estimates. We develop a new structural empirical method using the observed distribution of taxable income that exploits the differential tax treatment of business income for firms earning positive and negative taxable income. Our ETI estimates range between 1.9 for Canada and 0.04 for Uruguay, and these differences are much smaller than the range found in the literature (0 to 5). We use our estimates, a large set of predictors, and a random forest estimation to provide out-of-sample ETI estimates for 248 countries and find an average elasticity of 0.59.  We then show differences in elasticities across countries are explained by country characteristics (52%), tax system characteristics (31%), and firm characteristics (16%).

Abstract: We exploit a unique historical setting to study the roots of persistently weaker collective action in regions resettled after ethnic cleansing. After World War II, two million settlers relocated to the Czechoslovak frontier territories of Sudetenland, previously forcibly abandoned by ethnic Germans. More than seven decades later, we find sharply more individualistic responses to the pandemic crisis at the historic border of the resettled lands, despite finding no discontinuities in the supply of physical health infrastructure. Inter-generational transmission of individualistic norms, demonstrated via name choices and survey evidence, appears to drive the long-lasting footprint, although the legacy is moderated in places with initially less social capital destruction.

Abstract: Adequate wages aim to motivate higher performance of public officials, but can also redirect effort to simple activities easily observable by voters. We examine the implications of raising political remuneration using detailed administrative data from public procurement and a midterm policy reform that redefined population brackets used for political wage-setting. We show that better-paid representatives allocate more public contracts shortly before elections by awarding additional small and mid-sized contracts, dominantly on works, repairs and maintenance, via faster negotiated procedures. In line with re-election motives, the effects appear only in electorally competitive councils, while they are absent in single-party legislatures.