AN NBER PUBLICATION
ISSUE: No. 7, July 2000
The Digest
A free monthly publication featuring non-technical summaries of research on topics of broad public interest
Changes in the price of marijuana contributed significantly to the trends in marijuana use between 1982 and 1998, especially to the reduction in usage that occurred from 1982 to 1992.
Marijuana is the illicit drug most commonly used by adolescents, and it has been for at least 25 years. Research shows a significant correlation between marijuana use and poor school grades, as well as between marijuana use and dropping out of school.
In Marijuana and Youth (NBER...
Article
Investors avoid getting into funds likely to distribute capital gains and avoid cashing out of funds with large undistributed capital gains.
In Do After-Tax Returns Affect Mutual Fund Inflows? (NBER Working Paper No. 7595), Daniel Bergstresser and NBER Research Associate James Poterba show that at least some mutual fund investors seem to care a great deal about taxes. In a related paper -- Tax Externalities of Equity Mutual Funds (NBER Working Paper No. 7669) -- Joel...
Article
To justify tax systems with rising marginal rates requires assumptions that give an extraordinarily low weight to the interests of higher-income groups.
In The Elasticity of Taxable Income: Evidence and Implications (NBER Working Paper No. 7512), NBER Research Associate Jonathan Gruber and co-author Emmanuel Saez show that the overall elasticity of taxable income with respect to changes in net-of-tax marginal rates is 0.4. That is, a 10 percent change in the marginal...
Article
All demographic groups regardless of marital status, race, and education experience an increase in average benefits under the mixed plan.
One of the most talked about problems facing the United States is the impending social security funding crisis. Social security payroll taxes will have to rise sharply to meet the needs of growing numbers of elderly Americans or else future benefits will be slashed. An alternative to this dire scenario is to introduce an investment-...