Matthew Weinzierl
There are 7 articles for this faculty member.
About Faculty in this Article:
Matthew Weinzierl is an assistant professor in the Business, Government and the International Economy unit at Harvard Business School.
- More Working Knowledge from Matthew Weinzierl
- Matthew Weinzierl - Faculty
Research
- E-mail Matthew Weinzierl: mweinzierl@hbs.edu
HBS Faculty Views on Debt Crisis
| Published: | August 10, 2011 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | Views on News |
| Forum: | open for comment; 27 Comments posted |
In the midst of the US debt crisis, Harvard Business School faculty offer their views on what went wrong and what needs to be done to right the US ship of state.
An Exploration of Optimal Stabilization Policy
| Authors: | N. Gregory Mankiw and Matthew C. Weinzierl |
|---|---|
| Published: | August 5, 2011 |
| Paper Release Date: | May 2011 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
The researchers explore alternative policy responses to a recession caused by a decline in aggregate demand, the situation affecting the global economy over the last several years. They show that policies that stimulate the economy at the lowest budgetary cost may not be the best policies in terms of well-being, as well-being depends not only on the level of activity but also on the composition of it (due to consumption, investment, and government spending). In their model of the economy, monetary policy is the best response, and if it is sufficient to stop the recession, government spending ought to move in the same direction as private spending. If monetary policy is insufficient or restricted, fiscal policy should try to replicate what monetary policy would do. If that option, too, is restricted, conventional policies that increase government spending are merited.
The Surprising Power of Age-Dependent Taxes
| Author: | Matthew Weinzierl |
|---|---|
| Published: | June 22, 2011 |
| Paper Release Date: | May 2011 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Professor Matthew Weinzierl helps initiate a resurgence of interest in the idea of age-dependent taxes—that is, the idea of making the tax rate contingent upon the age of the tax payer. Using optimal tax theory as well as data from the US Panel Study of Income Dynamics, he shows how the administratively simple reform of age dependence can make the tax system substantially more efficient and more equitable.
Preference Heterogeneity and Optimal Capital Income Taxation
| Authors: | Mikhail Golosov, Maxim Troshkin, Aleh Tsyvinski, and Matthew Weinzierl |
|---|---|
| Published: | February 17, 2011 |
| Paper Release Date: | December 2010 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Professor Matthew Weinzierl and coauthors test the idea that savings, which is concentrated among highly skilled workers, ought to be taxed as part of an optimal tax policy. They find that the welfare gains from these taxes would be negligible.
Published in 2009
The Height Tax, and Other New Ways to Think about Taxation
| Q&A with: | Matthew Weinzierl |
|---|---|
| Published: | September 8, 2009 |
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
The notion of levying higher taxes on tall people—an idea offered largely tongue in cheek—presents an ideal way to highlight the shortcomings of current tax policy and how to make it better. Harvard Business School professor Matthew C. Weinzierl looks at modern trends in taxation.
Optimal Taxation in Theory and Practice
| Authors: | N. Gregory Mankiw, Matthew Weinzierl, and Danny Yagan |
|---|---|
| Published: | August 19, 2009 |
| Paper Release Date: | June 2009 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Are developments in the theory of taxation improving tax policies around the world? The optimal design of a tax system is a topic that has long fascinated economic theorists and flummoxed economic policymakers. This paper explores the interplay between tax theory and tax policy. It identifies key lessons policymakers might take from the academic literature on how taxes ought to be designed, and it discusses the extent to which these lessons are reflected in actual tax policy. The authors find that there has been considerable change in the theory and practice of taxation over the past several decades—although the two paths have been far from parallel. Overall, tax policy has moved in the directions suggested by theory along a few dimensions, even though the recommendations of theory along these dimensions are not always definitive.
The Optimal Taxation of Height: A Case Study of Utilitarian Income Redistribution
| Authors: | N. Gregory Mankiw and Matthew Weinzierl |
|---|---|
| Published: | August 19, 2009 |
| Paper Release Date: | June 2009 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
A tax on height follows inexorably from a well-established empirical regularity and the standard approach to the optimal design of tax policy. Many readers of this paper, however, will not so quickly embrace the idea of levying higher taxes on tall taxpayers. Indeed, when first hearing the proposal, most people either recoil from it or are amused by it. That reaction is precisely what makes tax policy so intriguing, according to N. Gregory Mankiw of Harvard University and Matthew Weinzierl of HBS. This paper addresses a classic problem: the optimal redistribution of income. A Utilitarian social planner would like to transfer resources from high-ability individuals to low-ability individuals, but is constrained by the fact that he cannot directly observe ability. Taxing height helps the planner achieve redistribution efficiently because height, the data show, is an indicator of income-earning ability. Although readers might take this paper in one of two ways—some seeing it as a small, quirky contribution aimed to clarify the literature on optimal income taxation, others as a broader effort to challenge the entire literature—the authors' results raise a fundamental question about the framework for optimal taxation for which William Vickrey and James Mirrlees won the 1996 Nobel Prize in Economics and which remains a centerpiece of modern public finance.
