I examine the ability of the U.S. investor protection regime to limit insider trading returns, absent Section 16(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the short-swing rule). I find that in this setting, U.S. insiders execute short-swing trades that i) beat the market by approximately 15 basis points per day and ii) systematically divest ahead of disappointing earnings announcements. These results indicate that the bright-line rule restricting short-horizon round-trip insider trading plays a substantial role in protecting outside investors from privately informed insiders in the United States.

We study the New York City taxi market to examine whether an excise tax hike on cigarettes corresponds to smoker taxi drivers more frequently cheating their customers. Increased cheating could be motivated by both financial pressures and as a reaction to unfair treatment (as surveyed smokers view cigarette tax hikes as quite unfair). We examine this question using detailed ride-level data where we can identify a rare but fraudulent overcharging technique (cheating) and a subsample of taxi drivers who smoke (affected taxpayers, identified via tickets for smoking in a cab). In difference-in-differences regressions we find that following a cigarette tax hike, taxi drivers who smoke are approximately 1.5 times more likely to cheat customers than other drivers. Our findings are strongest in the subsample of smokers with consistently low earnings.

The growing popularity of home-sharing platforms such as Airbnb, partly fueled by hosts’ ability to evade local taxes and regulations, has been shown to elevate housing costs by reallocating long-term housing units to the short-term rental market. This study assesses whether enhanced tax enforcement can mitigate this trend. We analyze staggered tax collection agreements between Airbnb and Florida counties, wherein Airbnb collects taxes from the hosts directly. Using a difference-in-differences methodology, we find these agreements significantly slow the growth of housing costs, highlighting the importance of tax policy in addressing the sharing economy’s influence on housing affordability.