AN NBER PUBLICATION
ISSUE: No. 4, April 2014
The Digest
A free monthly publication featuring non-technical summaries of research on topics of broad public interest
...a multinational company's headquarters location is a critical factor in determining its total tax burden.
For decades, scholars and policymakers have debated whether tax rates in the home country of a multinational firm affect the firm's effective tax rate (ETR), or whether opportunities for extensive international tax planning break this link. In The Impact of Headquarter and Subsidiary Locations on Multinationals' Effective Tax Rates (NBER Working Paper No. 19621...
Article
...dismissal threats increased the voluntary attrition of low-performing teachers and improved the performance of those who decided to remain.
While the effects of teacher quality on student development, achievement, and later outcomes have been widely studied, there is no agreement on how to systematically drive improvements in the quality of teachers. Teacher salaries are traditionally based only on experience and credentials. However, these traits may not have...
Article
...the compensation of school district employees tended to rise, on net, by 85 cents for each dollar increase in benefit costs.
When the cost of health insurance for public sector workers rises, is the higher charge reflected in higher taxes, in lower wages or other benefits for the employees, or in some combination of the two? In Who Pays for Public Employee Health Costs? (NBER Working Paper No. 19574) Jeffrey Clemens and David Cutler find that about 15 percent of...
Article
...timely federal tax cuts, combined with increases in food stamps and other in-kind transfers ... greatly cushioned the blow of falling incomes...
To a much greater degree than in the three previous economic downturns, the fall in median income during and after the Great Recession was accounted for by rising joblessness rather than by falling wages, according to Accounting for Income Changes over the Great Recession (2007‒2010) Relative to Previous Recessions: The...
Article
...carefully crafted and monitored managerial controls over mechanics led to a 20 percent increase in revenue.
Employers have long used performance pay and managerial controls as ways to boost employee productivity while also trying to avoid shirking and other problematic behavior (moral hazard) of workers. Reducing Moral Hazard in Employment Relationships: Experimental Evidence on Managerial Control and Performance Pay (NBER Working Paper No. 19645), by Kirabo...
Article
...rain on the previous election day lowers current voter turnout.
Economists and political scientists have observed that a citizen who votes today is more likely to vote in the future, but determining whether that is the result of unobserved individual attributes, or the effect of voting per se, is difficult. In Estimating Habit Formation in Voting (NBER Working Paper No. 19721), Thomas Fujiwara, Kyle Meng, and Tom Vogl conclude that voters are creatures of habit....