Jacob Goldin
Article
Whose Child Is This? Improving Child-Claiming Rules in Safety-Net Programs
Benefit programs for families rely on rules to determine which individuals can claim which children. These rules shape who qualifies for a program and who does not. This Article critically assesses the design of child-claiming rules, using as case studies the Child Tax Credit and the Earned Income T…
Essay
Which Way To Nudge? Uncovering Preferences in the Behavioral Age
Behavioral Law and Economics has created a dilemma for policymakers. On the one hand, research from the field suggests a wide range of unconventional policy instruments (“nudges”) may be used to shape people’s voluntary choices in order to lead them to the option they most pref…
Note
Sales Tax Not Included: Designing Commodity Taxes for Inattentive Consumers
122 Yale L.J. 258 (2012).
A spate of new research suggests that the salience of a tax dramatically shapes taxpayer behavior: the more salient a tax—i.e., the more prominent a good’s after-tax price—the more taxpayers respond. Policymakers make decisions about tax salience, whether they intend to or n…