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 individuals and firms interact with the tax and transfer system and how these policies shape economic outcomes, with a focus on redistribution.

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 97.7% of the VAT break was passed through to beneficiaries on average. Pass-through fell to 76.8% at stores with the highest pre-reform exposure to program-card purchases, but these stores accounted for a small share of program purchases. The findings suggest that targeted VAT relief can benefit low-income households without extending benefits to higher-income households, although market conditions remain important for incidence.

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