Economist, World Bank
I'm an Economist at the World Bank's Research Department (DEC-RG) in the Macro and Growth unit, and Research Associate at the Institute for Fiscal Studies. My research focuses on Taxation and Public Economics.
I'm co-leading DaTax, the new World Bank's tax data lab.
I did my Ph.D. at UC Berkeley under the supervision of Emmanuel Saez and received the 2020 National Tax Association’s Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award     (^_^)
Education:
Ph.D. in Economics from UC Berkeley, 2020.
M.A. and B.S. in Economics from UNLP, Argentina.
PUBLICATIONS
Design of Partial Population Experiments with an Application to Spillovers in Tax Compliance
Accepted at Review of Economics and Statistics (with Guillermo Cruces, Gonzalo Vazquez-Bare); [IFS WP version] (Slides long) (Slides short)
[ABSTRACT and FIGURE]
ABSTRACT
We develop a framework to analyze partial population experiments, a generalization of the cluster experimental design where clusters are assigned to different treatment intensities. Our framework addresses cluster heterogeneity, which is pervasive in empirical settings but commonly ignored when designing experiments. We consider two sources of heterogeneity: heterogeneity in cluster sizes and heterogeneity in outcome distributions across clusters. We study the large-sample behavior of OLS estimators and their corresponding cluster-robust variance estimators and show that (i) ignoring heterogeneity in experimental design may result in severely underpowered experiments and (ii) the cluster-robust variance estimator may be upward-biased when clusters are heterogeneous. We use our results to derive formulas for power, minimum detectable effects, and optimal cluster assignment probabilities. All our results apply to cluster experiments, which are a particular case of our framework. We set up a potential outcomes framework to interpret the OLS estimands as causal effects. We implement our methods in a large-scale experiment to estimate the direct and spillover effects of a communication campaign on property tax compliance. We find an increase in tax compliance among individuals directly targeted with our mailing, as well as compliance spillovers on untreated individuals in clusters with a high proportion of treated taxpayers.
Firms as Tax Collectors
Journal of Public Economics, March 2024, 233: 105092. (with Pablo Garriga) [Gated version] [IFS Working Paper] (Slides)
[ABSTRACT and FIGURE]
ABSTRACT
We show that delegating tax collection duties to large firms can bolster tax capacity in weak-enforcement settings. We exploit two reforms in Argentina that dramatically expanded and subsequently reduced turnover tax withholding by firms. Combining firm-to-firm data with regression discontinuity and difference-in-differences methods centered on revenue eligibility thresholds, we find that: (i) appointing large firms as collection agents (CAs) does not hinder their economic activity, (ii) it leads to a significant increase in self-reported sales and tax payments among CAs' business partners, (iii) these effects are primarily concentrated among downstream firms that lack a traceable paper trail, and (iv) reductions in withholding lead to a decrease in self-reported sales, albeit to a lesser extent. Tax-collecting firms can thus help boost tax compliance and revenue.
Summary for a broader audience: WB Development Impact Blog
WORKING PAPERS
ABSTRACT
This paper estimates the effect of a temporary and large (21 p.p.) value-added tax (VAT) cut along with anti-profiteering measures on food necessities during a period of high inflation in Argentina. Using barcode-level data across more than 3,000 supermarkets, we find that (1) absent the anti-profiteering measures, the pass-through of the temporary VAT cut to prices was asymmetric: prices responded less to the VAT cut than its repeal resulting in prices that were higher than their pre-VAT cut levels; (2) imposing anti-profiteering measures, such as setting a ceiling on price increases, led to symmetric pass-through rates. Using a household welfare model, we show that the VAT cut resulted in progressive welfare effects and that the anti-profiteering measures were successful at dampening the regressive welfare effects of the asymmetric pass-through. However, we show that these policies benefited high-income households more because pass-through rates are more asymmetric in independent grocery stores, which is precisely where low-income households tend to shop the most.
Summary for a broader audience: FocoEcónomico
ABSTRACT
Despite substantial offshore tax evasion, Argentines disclosed assets worth 21% of GDP under a tax amnesty in 2016. We study how enforcement initiatives impact individuals' tax behavior, tax progressivity, and revenue collection. Offshore tax evasion is concentrated among the wealthiest 0.1% of adults. Tax compliance improved, expanding the tax bases for both wealth tax and capital income tax, especially at the top. The subsequent tax hike on foreign assets in 2019 boosted tax progressivity, raising the effective tax rate for the wealthiest 0.1% of adults, and established Argentina's wealth tax as one of the most successful globally in revenue generation.
ABSTRACT
We show that how countries disburse tax credits matters for economic incidence. We exploit a reform in Argentina that shifted the disbursement of child benefits from employers to the government in a staggered fashion. Using administrative data and an event-study approach, we find that employers receive 5 to 13 percent of the transfers through reduced wages when they mediate the payments. This wage effect is more pronounced for low-income workers, particularly new hires, and in smaller and less unionized firms. We argue that workers likely misperceived firm-disbursed transfers as part of their work compensation, leading to incidence-sharing effects. Our findings suggest that relying on firms as intermediaries in the tax-benefit system can have unexpected labor market consequences.
ABSTRACT
We exploit a large, quasi-randomized, 2.5-year-long income tax holiday to identify intertemporal labor responses of high-wage earners to net wage changes. In August 2013, the Argentine government exempted a group of wage earners from the income tax for 2.5 years while leaving in place the tax on other high-wage earners. Eligibility was based on whether past wage earnings were below a fixed threshold, thus levying sharply different marginal and average tax rates—effectively 0% for workers below the threshold. Using rich population-wide administrative data and a regression discontinuity design, we estimate a precise and very small wage earnings elasticity of 0.017 for this large, salient, and temporary income tax change. Responses are larger for more flexible outcomes (overtime hours) and for more elastic groups (job switchers and managers). We also find avoidance responses from new entrants who faced no tax if their first monthly wage was below the fixed threshold. This strategic entry below the threshold to dodge taxes required coordination with employers. Our findings suggest the presence of rigidities in the labor market, which imply that wage earners' responses to tax changes depend largely on substantial coordination with employers.
ABSTRACT
We disentangle the extent of imperfect competition in product and labor markets using plant-level data. We derive a formula for the ratio between markups and markdowns assuming cost-minimizing firms that face upward-sloping labor supply and downward-sloping product demand curves. We then separate this combined measure of market power by estimating firm-level labor supply elasticities instrumenting wages with a different set of instruments including the use of intermediate inputs, input price shocks, and TFP shocks. Our results suggest that both markets exhibit imperfect competition, but the variation is mainly driven by markups. We also estimate the relative gains of removing market power dispersion on allocative efficiency, finding that markups are more important on TFP than markdowns.
ABSTRACT
We estimate the response of firms and self-employed workers to two revenue taxes—Monotributo and Gross Receipts Tax—across the turnover distribution using rich administrative data from Argentina. We exploit several revenue-dependent discontinuities that provide incentives to underreport taxable income combined with a bunching design to estimate sales elasticities. We also explore heterogeneities by firm size, type of activities, and type of taxpayers. In the case of small firms, we find sizeable bunching below the thresholds that is stronger for higher tax incentives. The response is stronger in sectors that have more space for manipulation, such as service-based activities. In the case of medium and large firms, bunching is more muted but it suggests that even large firms are able to underreport their gross sales to avoid facing higher tax rates. Firms also seem to find more costly the indirect administrative cost of becoming a collection agent than the direct fiscal cost of the Gross Receipts Tax. We cannot rule out, however, that large firms adjust other margins (or taxes) to compensate for the higher tax pressure.
SELECTED WORK IN PROGRESS
We use high-frequency scanner data along with several hundreds naturally occurring variation in price controls at the barcode level in Argentine supermarkets, to uncover new facts about price controls in a setting of high inflation. We use an event study approach where treated goods (barcodes) are compared to otherwise similar goods. First, we show that price controls are indeed effective at holding prices fixed and observe a high rate of compliance. Second, we find little evidence of wide-spread shortages due to the introduction of price controls. Instead, we observe a large increase in quantities purchased, which double on average, as price controls keep prices lower relative to other goods. Third, prices revert to slightly higher levels once a given barcode is no longer subject to price controls, suggesting that such interventions do not have any long lived effects on inflation. As a result, quantities purchased of the controlled barcodes decrease. We also explore substitution behavior between products subject to price controls and close substitutes. The policy seems to have no distributional effects since it benefits rich and poor households equally.
We study the efficiency and distributional effects of price controls. Despite the controversy surrounding the effects of this regulation, surprisingly little has been done in practice to test the contrasting predictions. In this project, we aim to fill this gap by exploiting scanner data and quasi-experimental variation from price regulations introduced in the Argentine retail sector in 2014. We first study the effect of price controls on the supply of targeted products, spillovers on similar products, and explore how it differs by the level of concentration in the product's industry. Guided by these results, in the second part of the paper we estimate markups at the product level and explore whether price controls can affect the level of concentration in the industry. In the third part, we study the distributional and welfare effects of price controls.
ABSTRACT
We exploit a series of changes in taxation of overtime hours in France to identify the elasticities of the demand and supply of overtime work. Using both exhaustive linked employer-employee data, administrative data on payroll taxes and survey data on paid vs unpaid overtime hours, we examine the effects of firm- and employee-side taxation on overtime hours, firm-level employment and the probability for firms of declaring or not overtime hours. While overtime work can have potentially large consequences on overall employment and on firms’ capacity to react to shocks, it remains unclear what drives labor demand and supply of overtime. Our project explores these channels.
Two understudied areas in Public Finance are the role of tax professionals and the role of networks in tax administration and enforcement (Slemrod, 2019). In this project I seek to answer two questions: First, whether it is more cost-effective to communicate tax preparers or taxpayers to improve tax compliance; Second, whether there are spillover effects from targeted to non-targeted taxpayers that form part of the same network (those sharing the same accountant). To that end, I run a large scale randomized communication experiment where I send deterrence emails to taxpayers and/or accountants (about 100,000 taxpayers in the treatment group and 900,000 in the control group).
POLICY PAPERS
Anatomía del Impuesto a las Ganancias sobre los Asalariados: Argentina 2000-2016
In preparation for Revista de Trabajo (Ministry of Labor, Argentina)
Investment in ICT, Productivity, and Labor Demand (SSRN WP) (Updated version)
(with Irene Brambilla), World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 8325 (January 2018)
Pre-doctoral
Growth in Labor Earnings Across the Income Distribution: Latin America During the 2000s
(with Irene Brambilla), CEDLAS, Working Papers 182, CEDLAS, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, 2015.
An Empirical Analysis of Mark-ups in the Argentine Manufacturing Sector
(with Irene Brambilla), Department of Economics, Working Papers 104, Departamento de Economía, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, 2014.
Female Labor Supply and Fertility. Causal Evidence for Latin America
CEDLAS, Working Papers 0166, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, 2013.
Measuring Poverty in Argentina: the Food Energy Intake Method
(with Malena Arcidiácono), XLVII Annual Meeting of the Argentine Association of Political Economy, 2012.
Other Publications
Fiscal Decentralization and Economic Integration in Mercosur: Argentina and Brazil
(with Alberto Porto, Natalia Porto), Latin American Business Review, 15:3-4, 225-252, DOI: 10.1080/10978526.2014.931787
"Glocalization" and decentralization. The role of local governments in the new international context
(with Alberto Porto, Natalia Porto), Urban Public Economics Review, num. 20, pp. 62-93.
Chapters in books
La Calidad de la Administración Tributaria como Insumo de la Función de Producción Recaudatoria
(with A. Porto and W. Rosales), In Porto A. (editor), Temas de Economía de los Gobiernos Municipales, Buenos Aires: Ed. DUNKEN. 2012. ISBN: 978-987-02-6003-5.
★ A Primer for Doing Tax Research with Administrative Data [Slides]
Economía Pública: Impuestos (in Spanish), Maestría en Economía UNLP --- [SEE CONTENT]
Economía Pública: Impuestos (2024)
Esta pagina contiene los materiales del medio-curso Economía Pública: Impuestos para estudiantes de la Maestría en Economía de la Universidad Nacional de La Plata (UNLP). El curso cubre temas como estructura y diseño óptimo de impuestos sobre la renta y transferencias de dinero, comportamiento de las personas (decisiones laborales, elusión y evasión), modelos de evasión, e incidencia económica. El curso combina teoría y evidencia empírica sobre temas de política actual, como las reformas fiscales y los programas de transferencia utilizando varios métodos econométricos.
Programa: pdf
Lectures
Repaso: Basic theory tools (ver solos)
Quiz: (link)
Clase 1: Intro to Public Economics and Overview of income tax-benefit system
Clase 2: Optimal Labor Income Taxation
Clase 3: Optimal Design of Transfers
Clase 4: Labor Supply and Taxable Income Responses to Taxes and Transfers
Bunching
Clase 5: Tax Enforcement
Aplicación: Impuestos sobre la propiedad
Clase 6: Tax Incidence
Quiz: (link)
Bonus lecture: Doing Tax Research with Admin Data
Assignments
Referee Report: Instructions [How to Write it Effectively] /// Knebelmann (2024) / Lobel (2024)
Research Proposal: Instructions
Evaluación de Políticas Públicas (in Spanish)--- [VER CONTENIDO]
Política Pública en Acción: Analisis y Evaluación de Políticas Públicas -- Julio 2022
En este curso se realiza una revisión general de herramientas econométricas utilizadas en la evaluación de políticas públicas (clases en Zoom) y se discuten aplicaciones de papers recientes que buscan estimar el impacto causal de diferentes políticas (clases presenciales).
Programa: pdf
Clases
Slides 1: Contrafactuales, Analisis de Regresion, Matching
Slides 2: Asignacion Aleatoria, Variables Instrumentales
Slides 3: Diseno de Regresion Discontinua
Slides 4: Diff-in-Diff, Event Studies, Control Sintetico
Slides 5: Aplicaciones de Asignacion Aleatoria
====> Ejemplo Randomizacion en Excel
Slides 6: Aplicaciones de RDD
Slides 7: Aplicaciones de Diff-in-Diff y Control Sintetico
Ejercicios y Consigna Final
Ejercicio 1
Ejercicio 2
Ejercicio 3
Trabajo Final
Advanced Public Economics --- [SEE CONTENT] --- Teaching Award 2022/23
Advanced Public Economics -- Fall'22
This page contains course materials for Advanced Public Economics for year-3 undergrads. The course covers topics such as tax and welfare policy, income taxation, social security programs, tax enforcement, tax incidence, and public goods. The course combines theory along with empirical research on current policy issues such as inequality and poverty, tax reforms, and cash transfer programs using various econometric methods.
Syllabus: pdf
Lectures
Week 1: Introduction to Public Economics
Week 2: Inequality, Poverty, Taxes and Transfers
Week 3: Overview of the UK Tax and Benefit System
Week 4: Optimal Labour Income Taxation
Week 5: Optimal Design of Transfers
Week 6: Labor Supply Responses to Taxes and Transfers
Week 7: Taxable Income Responses to Taxation
Week 8: Tax Enforcement
Week 9: Tax Incidence
Week 10: Public Goods
Bonus lecture: How to do Tax Research with Admin Data
Assignments
Problem Set 1 /// (Solutions)
Problem Set 2 /// (Solutions)
Problem Set 3 /// (Solutions)
Final Exam /// (Solutions)
Teaching Evaluation from Students /// (scores)
Teaching Award /// (certificate)
Economic Policy Analysis --- [SEE CONTENT]
Economic Policy Analysis II -- Spring'22
This page contains course materials for Economic Policy Analysis II co-taught with Bouwe Dijkstra. My part of the course focuses on optimal income tax and transfer theory and the empirical literature that estimates behavioural responses to progressive tax systems.
Syllabus: pdf
Lectures
Slides 1: Introduction and Overview of the UK system
Slides 2: Optimal Income Tax and Transfers
Slides 3: Labor Supply Responses to Taxes and Transfers
Slides 4: Taxable Income Responses to Taxation
Assignments
Problem Set /// (Solutions)
Mock Exam
Final Exam
Public Economics 131 (Prof. Emmanuel Saez), Spring 2017 --- [SEE CONTENT]
ECON 131: Public Economics (Spring'17)
This page contains section notes and other course materials
for ECON 131: Public Economics taught by Emmanuel Saez.
Office hours: Fridays 3-6pm, 630 Evans Hall
Section notes
Section 1: Optimization Review -Updated 2017- /// (Solutions)
Section 2: Empirical Tools -Updated 2017- /// (Solutions)
Section 3: Tax Incidence and Efficiency Costs -Updated 2017- /// (Solutions)
Section 4: Labor Income Taxation -Updated 2017- /// (Solutions)
Section 5: Labor Income Taxation (cont.) -Updated 2017- /// (Solutions)
Section 6: Capital Income and Savings Taxation -Updated 2017- /// (Solutions)
Section 7: Externalities -Updated 2017- /// (Solutions)
Section 8: Public Goods -Updated 2017- /// (Solutions)
Section 9: Voting, Tiebout Model, and Local Public Finance -Updated 2017- /// (Solutions)
Section 10: Social Security and Insurance -Updated 2017- /// (Solutions)
Section 11: Moral Hazard and Social Security -Updated 2017- /// (Solutions)
Assignments
Problem Set 1 /// (Solutions)
Problem Set 2 /// (Solutions)
Problem Set 3 /// (Solutions)
Problem Set 4 /// (Solutions)
Additional Practice [optional] /// (Solutions)