Matías Strehl-Pessina

Welcome! I am a PhD candidate in Economics at University of California, Santa Barbara.

My research is in Public Economics, Development Economics, and Political Economy. I study how tax and transfer systems affect poverty and inequality.

My job market paper studies whether targeted VAT breaks for low-income households can reduce VAT regressivity while limiting retailer capture. It examines a reform in Uruguay that gave low-income welfare beneficiaries a VAT break on basic goods purchased with their program card. Using retail scanner data on the universe of participating stores and a difference-in-differences design, I estimate that 96.8% of the VAT break was passed through to beneficiaries on average. Pass-through fell to 86% at stores with the highest pre-reform exposure to program-card purchases, but these stores accounted for a small share of program purchases. The results show that personalized VAT breaks can target relief more efficiently than traditional reduced rates. At the same time, they demonstrate that when beneficiaries are geographically concentrated, stores can capture part of the benefit, cautioning policymakers against assuming full pass-through of welfare program benefits.

I am on the 2026-2027 job market.

You can find my CV here and learn more about my research here.

Contact information: 

mstrehlpessina@ucsb.edu