We propose a Cramér–von Mises–type test for testing whether the mean potential outcome given a specific treatment level has a weakly monotonic relationship with the continuous treatment under unconfoundedness. To flexibly control for a possibly high-dimensional set of covariates, our test is based on a double debiased machine learning method. We show that our test controls asymptotic size and is consistent against any fixed alternative. We apply our test to evaluate the Job Corps program and reject a weakly negative relationship between the treatment (hours in academic and vocational training) and labor market performance among relatively low treatment values.

Consignment auctions are two-stage mechanisms to (re)allocate emission permits. Firms are first endowed with permits and then allowed to trade them. We determine theoretically endowments that enable efficient allocation, subject to incentive compatibility, individual rationality, and no deficit. All firms prefer efficient consignment auctions to efficient standard auctions, making them politically palatable. Firms’ investment incentives align with the first-best in efficient consignment auctions. Grandfathering based on efficient long-run allocations induces efficiency-permitting endowments. A simple calibration to data from Southern California’s RECLAIM program validates our no-deficit assumption and shows that grandfathering provides the best theoretical match for the empirically observed endowments.

We study the implications of the presence of foreign multinationals on regional corporate tax policies of a country. We develop and estimate a quantitative spatial model with multinational production (MP) and local corporate taxes. Exploiting China's 2008 corporate tax reform, we find that firm production across regions is twice as footloose as estimates in the literature on cross-country production. Counterfactual analysis shows that (i) China's 2008 corporate tax reform shifted foreign-firm productions to western provinces and increased Chinese welfare by 0.86%; (ii) regional tax competition would significantly reduce China's corporate tax revenue, lowering the welfare by 5.56%; (iii) the nationally optimal corporate tax schedule would increase Chinese welfare by 3.10%. Finally, without the presence of foreign multinationals, the welfare loss from regional tax competition would be 2.04%, while the gain from the nationally optimal corporate taxes would be only 0.06%.

This paper introduces a structural model for the coevolution of networks and behavior. We characterize the equilibrium of the underlying game and adopt the Bayesian Double Metropolis-Hastings algorithm to estimate the model. We further extend the model to incorporate unobserved heterogeneity and show that ignoring this heterogeneity can lead to biased estimates in simulation experiments. We apply the model to study R&D investment and collaboration decisions in the chemical and pharmaceutical industry and find a positive knowledge spillover effect. Our model also provides a tractable framework for a long-run key player analysis.

We use matched employer-employee data to study the role of the firm in the transmission of income growth into consumption growth. We find that growth in income relative to the firm average (the within-firm component) translates significantly less into consumption than growth in firm average income (the between-firm component). These findings are explained by the lower persistence of the within-firm component of income, better self-insurance for workers more exposed to variations in income growth from the within-firm component, and peer effects in the workplace. Quantitatively, income persistence provides 43% of the explanatory power, self-insurance provides 35%, and peer effects provide 22%.

This paper examines methods of inference concerning quantile treatment effects (QTEs) in randomized experiments with matched-pairs designs (MPDs). The standard multiplier bootstrap inference fails to capture the negative dependence of observations within each pair, and thus, is conservative. The analytical inference involves estimating multiple functional quantities that requires several tuning parameters. In this paper, we propose two bootstrap methods that can consistently approximate the limit distribution of the original QTE estimator and lessen the burden of tuning parameter choice. In particular, the inverse propensity score weighted multiplier bootstrap can be implemented without knowledge of pair identities.

Using administrative tax records for U.K. businesses, we document both bunching in annual turnover below the VAT registration threshold and persistent voluntary registration by almost half of the firms below the threshold. We develop a conceptual framework that can simultaneously explain these two apparently conflicting facts. The framework also predicts that higher intermediate input shares, lower product-market competition, and a lower share of business to consumer sales lead to voluntary registration. The predictions are exactly the opposite for bunching. We test the theory using linked VAT and corporation tax records from 2004 to 2014, finding empirical support for these predictions.