A combination of nudges and taxes always outperforms each policy in isolation; however, there is large variation in how much these combinations add to social welfare, reinforcing the importance of empirically quantifying welfare effects.

Relative to borrowers who had to continue paying their loans, borrowers allowed to pause their payments sharply increased mortgage, auto, and credit card borrowing, with little effect on loan delinquencies.

Receiving a message about a tax amnesty program (especially deterrence messages) increases the likelihood of joining the amnesty and repaying some debt; importantly, such amnesties do not cause a reduction in tax payments over the following two years, contrary to existing theoretical predictions.

Interest rates among advanced economies have fallen precipitously in recent years, following a decades-long trend, and fueling fears of secular, or long-term, stagnation. What that means is the interest rate that balances desired saving and investment and, thus, leads to full employment and stable inflation, has not only approached zero but in theory could be negative, especially if not for generous government social programs. Likewise, fiscal deficits have grown.

Losing Supplemental Security Income (SSI) at 18 increases the number of criminal charges over the next two decades, with the costs of enforcement and incarceration from SSI removal approaching the savings from reduced SSI benefits.

The past 40 years have seen labor’s share of US corporate-sector income (or value added) fall five percentage points vs. the share going to capital, from 62.9 percent to 57.9 percent. This decline in labor’s share has not only fueled calls for higher taxes on the wealthy to stem growing inequality but has also led to dire warnings about the future of democracy should this trend persist, a lá Thomas Piketty’s 2014 Capital in the Twenty-First Century.

A temporary reduction in Germany’s value added tax in the second half of 2020 led to a 36% increase in durable spending for individuals with a high perceived pass-through, along with an increase in semi- and non-durable spending; in addition, aggregate consumption spending rose by 34 billion Euros.