Research
Presentations: Oxford (Centre for Business Taxation); Prague (International Institute of Public Finance 2024 Congress); Rotterdam (European Economic Association-Econometric Society 2024 Congress)
Synopsis
We analyze the role of financing frictions for investment in R&D and innovation for privately-held firms using a structural model and confidential administrative data.Did the 2003 Dividend Tax Cut Increase the Payouts and Investment of Large US Corporations? An International Perspective with Steve Bond [Early Solo-authored Version Available]
Presentation: Oxford (Economics Department, CBT-SBS); Paris (CEPR-PSE Policy Forum 2024); Rotterdam (EEA/ESEM 2024 congress)
Synopsis
We highlight striking similarities in the cycles around 2003, in both payouts to shareholders and corporate investment, between matched samples of publicly traded US and non-US companies. To the extent that the 2003 US dividend tax cut had any significant effect on the payout and investment behaviour of large US corporations, it must have had essentially the same effect on the payout and investment behaviour of similar large corporations in other advanced economies. A more likely explanation is that these common cycles were driven by common global business cycle factors.Wealth Taxation & Labour Supply: Evidence from Denmark [Soon!]
Market Power in the Middle East with Yevgeniya Korniyenko and Weining Xin [IMF Working Paper 2025(1)]
Coverage: GCC-IMF Ministerial Note
Presentations: Washington (IMF-MCD, Fundwide); Istanbul (MEEA); San Francisco (ASSA 2025); Cairo (AUC - Economics Department, AUC - Public Policy Department, Economic Research Forum)
Synopsis
Market Power in the Middle East among listed firms is higher than the US and falling over the 2004-2022 period.Published
The Midlife Crisis with Osea Guintella, Sally McManus, Andrew Oswald, Redzo Mujcic, & Nick Powdthavee [Economica 2023]
Coverage: The New York Times, Fortune, The Times, The Telegraph, The Guardian, Axios, AlSharq AlAwsat, Freakonomics Podcast, Times Higher Education
Synopsis
We show using hard measures a crisis of midlife in affluent nations. This corroborates previous findings using subjective wellbeing data. Midlife is a time when people disproportionately take their own lives, have trouble sleeping, are clinically depressed, spend time thinking about suicide, feel life is not worth living, find it hard to concentrate, forget things, feel overwhelmed in their workplace, suffer from disabling headaches, and become dependent on alcohol.Selected Work-in-progress
Migrant Human Capital Investment: Evidence from the 1999 German Nationality Reform [Work-in-progress]
Draft Available on Request
Synopsis
I document that easing the acquiring of German citizenship for migrants in Germany led to a reduction of human capital investments by 5% in 1999. I suggest a disaster risk mechanism that accounts for this paradoxical fact.