David Sjoquist - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by David Sjoquist

Journal of Human Resources, 2012

In a recent paper in this Journal, Dynarski (2008) used data from the 1-percent 2000 Census Publi... more In a recent paper in this Journal, Dynarski (2008) used data from the 1-percent 2000 Census Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) files to demonstrate that merit scholarship programs in Georgia and Arkansas increased the stock of college-educated individuals in those states. This paper replicates the results in Dynarski (2008) but we also find important differences in the results between the 1-percent and 5-percent PUMS, especially for women. We also demonstrate that the author's use of clustered standard errors, given the small number of clusters and only two policy changes, severely understates confidence intervals.

Tax Reform: Georgia Style. A presentation by David L. Sjoquist to the Nebraska Tax Modernization ... more Tax Reform: Georgia Style. A presentation by David L. Sjoquist to the Nebraska Tax Modernization Committee Meeting in Lincoln, Nebraska on August […

Review of Regional Studies, 2014

A number of U.S. states are considering tax reforms that would significantly reduce or eliminate ... more A number of U.S. states are considering tax reforms that would significantly reduce or eliminate income taxes and recover the lost revenue by increasing its sales taxes. To gauge the economic effects of such reforms, we construct a multi-regional, dynamic, open economy, general equilibrium (CGE) model. Our model is an advancement over existing regional CGE models used to simulate the impact of state tax reforms in the U.S. context. We simulate the impact of a variety of tax reforms and find that Georgia’s economy benefits but at the expense of the five comparison states we include.

National Tax Journal, 1995

The effect of the differential tax treatment of married and unmarried couples, the so-called marr... more The effect of the differential tax treatment of married and unmarried couples, the so-called marriage tax, on the rate and timing of marriages is analyzed. Using time-series data, we study the effect of the marriage tax on the fraction of unmarried women over the age of 15 years who marry in each year. We find no effect. We also investigate whether couples shift the timing of their marriage from the end of one year to the beginning of the next year in response to an increase in the marriage tax. We find empirical support for this behavior.

Revista Hacienda Pública Española, 2020

We conduct a laboratory experiment to explore the willingness to pay to improve the accuracy of p... more We conduct a laboratory experiment to explore the willingness to pay to improve the accuracy of property assessment and issues regarding attitudes toward these assessments and taxes. We explore individual willingness to pay to improve property assessment accuracy; the extent to which the willingness to pay to improve the accuracy of property assessments depends on whether the risk for other property owners decreases; and fnally, we use the results to estimate demand for reduced risk and fnd that subjects were not willing to pay to reduce the assessment variance to a level consistent with best practices in property tax assessment.

International Journal of Population Data Science, 2019

There is a great deal of interest and concern in the trends in income inequality in the United St... more There is a great deal of interest and concern in the trends in income inequality in the United States and how it inequality has changed since the Great Recession. Various reasons for this divide have been offered but are notoriously difficult to evaluate due to data constraints. Public sector programs aimed at alleviating poverty are also difficult to measure because of data issues. In this paper, we estimate the impact of one of the largest federal support programs in the U.S. on income mobility of at risk populations. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) serves low income families by providing significant food benefits. In this paper, we create a dataset linking SNAP (food stamp) administrative records (over 1 million records per year) to Department of Labor earnings records (over 4 million records per year) at the individual level from 2001-2016. Using these uniquely matched administrative records, we can track earnings mobility over time as one measure of the eff...

National Tax Journal, 2000

The National Tax Association's project on the taxation of telecommunications and electronic comme... more The National Tax Association's project on the taxation of telecommunications and electronic commerce recommended that each state employing a sales and use tax consider adopting a single statewide rate rather than continue with the number of rates currently in use. This recommendation was made in response to the criticism that current state sales and use tax schemes are too complex to expect multi-state vendors to collect and remit the sales tax in thousands of state and local jurisdictions. This article reviews the history of single rate suggestions and the problems for state and local governments that are expected to develop under such a proposal. The feasibility of adopting such a policy in five states, California, Georgia, New York, Tennessee, and Utah, is analyzed. The results of the examination reveal that the proposal is administratively feasible and simplification could be achieved. In some states the adoption of a single rate would result in modest tax revenue shifts, but in others the revenue readjustments would be significant. All states would face sizable political obstacles to a single rate proposal. We conclude that states should consider using a single rate for use tax collections and continue the use of multiple rates for in-state sales tax collections. Regardless, states must actively pursue polices to simplify their current tax processes at every opportunity.

State and Local Finances under Pressure

City Taxes, City Spending

While local option sales taxes (LOST) have become an important revenue source for local governmen... more While local option sales taxes (LOST) have become an important revenue source for local governments, there has been concern about the distribution of LOST revenues: the uneven distribution of sales tax bases may have introduced a new source of fiscal inequality and exacerbated existing fiscal disparity. Using Georgia county data (N 5 159, 1970-2000), this study examines whether and how LOST have affected local fiscal disparity. Our findings suggest that the effects of LOST on fiscal disparity vary with the approach to measure revenueraising capacity; thus the issue of LOST distribution is sensitive to the underlying conceptualization of ''fiscal equity.'' 3. As of January 2004, all but five counties in Georgia have adopted the LOST. The five counties without the

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2007

In this paper, we revisit the theory of property tax incidence in light of the conditions in deve... more In this paper, we revisit the theory of property tax incidence in light of the conditions in developing and transition countries by modifying the property tax incidence model to account for at least some of the specific conditions of these countries that are thought to affect property tax incidence. We develop and use a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model and test the impact of various assumptions regarding those specific issues that reflect the reality of property taxes in transition and developing countries. Our results indicate that the burden of property taxes imposed on capital and land is borne by the capitalists (owners of land and capital.) The property tax burden is progressive with the middle income and wealthy consumers bearing a heavier burden compared to the poor consumers. Further, the incidence patterns are largely unaffected by the different assumptions regarding the intranational and international mobility of capital. These findings are robust to alternative distributions of consumer incomes or factor endowments and factor intensities.

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2004

This paper examines alternative explanations for the decline over the past two decades in state c... more This paper examines alternative explanations for the decline over the past two decades in state corporate income taxes relative to the state economy. We employ a survey of state tax administrators, individual tax returns from Georgia and Utah, and panel data to explore the importance of tax policy, tax planning, and economic factors on the trend in state corporate taxes. We find that corporate tax planning and economic factors account for much of the relative decline and that state tax policy changes are important factors. However, federal tax changes had only a modest effect during this period.

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2006

We add to the small literature on private school supply by exploring exits of K-12 private school... more We add to the small literature on private school supply by exploring exits of K-12 private schools. We find that the closure of private schools is not an infrequent event, and use national survey data from the National Center for Education Statistics to study closures of private schools. We assume that the probability of an exit is a function of excess supply of private schools over the demand, as well as the school's characteristics such as age, size, and religious affiliation. Our empirical results generally support the implications of the model. 7 Research on the exit of for-profit firms, for example, Mayer and Chappell (1992) and Bernard and Jensen (2002), focus on manufacturing firms. Mayer and Chappell (1992) model exits as a function of profits, industry size, industry growth, and sunk costs. Bernard and Jensen (2002) examine the deaths of manufacturing plants and focus their analysis on four factors: imports from low wage countries; firm structure and ownership; product market characteristics (in particular, whether the firm sells abroad and whether it produces multiple products); and plant attributes such as age, size and capital intensity, wage rate. There are several studies (e.g.,

The Review of Economics and Statistics, 1991

Southern Economic Journal, 2010

We combine records of Atlanta Housing Authority (AHA) clients, Georgia Department of Labor (DOL) ... more We combine records of Atlanta Housing Authority (AHA) clients, Georgia Department of Labor (DOL) employment records, and neighborhood characteristics to analyze the causal effect of an exogenous move out of public housing on the employment of public housing residents. The exogenous move was caused by a HOPE VI or HOPE VI‐like project in Atlanta. We find that such an exogenous move has a positive and statistically significant effect on the probability of employment for those residents who moved relative to other public housing tenants. We also compare the change in employment of those whose exogenous move was to another public housing unit to those who took a housing voucher. We also compare the change in the probability of employment associated with an exogenous move and a voluntary move and find that both types of moves are associated with a greater probability of employment as compared to those who did not move.

Public Finance Review, 2005

Alternative hypotheses exist regarding the impact of local sales and income taxes on local govern... more Alternative hypotheses exist regarding the impact of local sales and income taxes on local governments’ taxing and spending decisions. One hypothesis is that local governments use sales and income taxes to pay for spending increases and leave property tax collections unchanged, while an equally plausible alternative is that local governments use sales and income taxes to reduce property taxes. Traditional models that restrict the impact of these local taxes to be the same across all local governments are not able to capture both types of behavior. The methodological difficulty lies in allowing for differences in behavior with no a priori information on which cities belong in which category. In this article, the authors use panel data to estimate a mixture model of spending and property tax response to the existence of local taxes. These empirical results provide evidence to support both hypotheses. These differences are both substantive and statistically significant.

Public Budgeting <html_ent glyph="@amp;" ascii="&"/> Finance, 2004

This report focuses on selected issues associated with alternative sources of transportation fund... more This report focuses on selected issues associated with alternative sources of transportation funding. In particular, this report: presents a list of funding options, discusses the advantages and disadvantages of each option, explores public attitudes towards ...