How to fund nonprofits?
Journal of Public Economics, 2026 [Forthcoming Version ]
Abstract: This paper studies the optimal combination of government grants that provide direct public funding to nonprofits and tax incentives that reduce the cost of charitable giving. When nonprofits face high fundraising costs to attract donors, tax incentives cannot fully replace grants, which remain part of the optimal funding policy. When fundraising costs are sufficiently low, a government that can tailor tax incentives across causes can finance some causes entirely through donations. However, when cause-specific tax differentiation is unavailable, grants remain necessary to accommodate differences in funding needs across causes. In a calibrated example, imposing a uniform tax treatment of donations across charitable causes raises the optimal share of nonprofit funding covered by grants from 0 to 60%.
Scale-dependent and risky returns to savings : Consequences for optimal capital taxation.
Journal of Public Economic Theory, 2023, vol. 25, no 3, p. 532-569 [Published Version ]
Faut-il mettre au barème les dividendes? (avec Marie-Noëlle Lefebvre, Etienne Lehmann et Michael Sicsic)
Revue française d’économie, 2021, vol. 36, no 1, p. 57-98. [Article Publié]
Distortions for Nothing: Optimal Taxation of (Un)Distributed Profits (with Etienne Lehmann)[CESifo Working Paper No.12424]
Abract: We study the optimal taxation of corporate and dividend income when entrepreneurs can use retained earnings to reduce their tax burden. We show that eliminating dividend taxes while increasing the corporate income tax (CIT) to keep investment unchanged raises total tax revenue. Our simulations suggest net revenue gains of 0.1-0.4% of GDP. In an infinite-horizon model, the optimal policy sets dividend taxes to zero in every period. As the discount factor approaches one and when the planner values only workers' welfare, the optimal steady-state CIT converges to a standard inverse-elasticity rule.
Wealth and Income Responses to Dividend Taxation : Evidence from France (with Marie-Noëlle Lefebvre). [Preliminary Draft ]
Optimal Nonlinear Taxation of Charitable Giving