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Publication Taxation of Business Income(2013-01-01) Blouin, Jennifer LAs U.S. legislators struggle to balance the fiscal budget, tax reform and business income tax, often emerges at the forefront of the discussion. Not all business income is taxed the same, creating great challenges in the design of new tax policy. The implications arising from the different ways in which corporate and non-corporate entities are taxed needs to be understood in order to anticipate how changes in tax policy could affect businesses and their tax obligations.Publication As American as Apple Inc.: Corporate Ownership and the Fight for Tax Reform(2016-01-01) PPI, Penn WhartonBoth supporters and critics of the current tax advantages enjoyed by U.S. multinational corporations (MNCs) bolster their arguments with appeals to patriotism: the MNCs and their political supporters argue that allowing inversions or other similar arrangements and instituting another tax holiday for “repatriating” overseas earnings are good for the American economy as a whole; opponents condemn these tax advantages as unpatriotic in depriving the U.S. of enormous sums of needed revenue. But where, precisely, is the “home” to which profits held offshore return? For many purposes, home is where the shareholders are. Determining ownership of U.S. MNCs such as Apple and GE, however, is extremely hard to do. Appeals for policies that promote U.S. competitiveness by presuming U.S. ownership of U.S. incorporated parent companies rest, in the end, on very little.Publication The FDA and the Regulation of Medical Device Innovation: A Problem of Information, Risk, and Access(2016-02-01) Grennan, Matthew; Town, Robert JAre FDA premarket trials on new drugs and medical devices excessive and do they inhibit consumer access to new and much-needed technologies? Or may they actually be insufficient and expose consumers to too much risk? To address this question, the new research described here compares the regulatory approaches of the U.S. and the European Union for second and third generation coronary stents. The research supports the FDA’s argument that reductions in their standards for device approval would reduce consumer welfare. Nevertheless, the research also suggests that in some circumstances, FDA reform proposals advocating for more relaxed premarket requirements but enhanced post-market surveillance would yield considerable welfare gains.Publication Improving Future Policy Responses to Foreseeable Bank Risk-Taking(2019-09-01) Gomes, Joao F; Grotteria, Marco; Wachter, Jessica AThis brief offers new perspectives on the behavior of banks during the financial crisis of 2007-08 and the limited success of unconventional monetary policies in stimulating bank credit to the private sector during the subsequent economic recovery. The common narrative about the financial crisis is that it was caused by a large credit expansion with overly risky loan-granting behavior by banks. We argue, however, that banks actually made optimal financial decisions in the lead-up to the crisis, based on their calculation of their franchise value. The brief explains the mechanics of franchise value—how it led banks to shift their portfolios toward riskier household loans before the crisis, as well as how it dampened the impact of quantitative easing and other novel monetary policies meant to stimulate the investment of capital into the private sector. Policymakers have failed to recognize the role that franchise value plays in all bank decisions. If they wish to devise appropriate fiscal or monetary policies to prevent or mitigate a future crisis, they need to properly account for how franchise value drives the decision-making of bank managers.Publication The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act’s Incorporation “Incentive”(2019-10-28) Knoll, Michael S.Many observers have asserted that the reduced corporate tax rate instituted by the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) has transformed entity choice for business owners, incentivizing owners of businesses structured as sole proprietorships or passthrough entities to incorporate their businesses and to use these new corporations as pocketbook investment vehicles to invest in and hold portfolio investments, substantially reducing wealthy individuals’ tax obligations and Treasury’s tax collections. This brief offers a different view, and discusses why predictions of widespread conversions to the corporate form at a substantial cost to the fiscal position of the U.S. are overstated. The brief explores the various purported tax advantages to incorporating, both when business owners are looking to invest substantial profits in portfolio assets, as well as when retained earnings are reinvested in the business and produce ordinary income.Publication Updating the Crowdfunding Narrative(2019-07-08) Tsoukalas, Gerry; Marinesi, Simone; Babich, VolodymyrPolicymakers concerned about stimulating small business and entrepreneurial growth need to better understand the dynamics of crowdfunding as a vehicle for that growth. The conventional wisdom is that raising cash through crowdfunding always benefits entrepreneurs. But that is not the complete picture. In reality, there are ways in which entrepreneurs, as well as VCs looking for new investments, may actually be left worse off after a successful crowdfunding campaign. This issue brief examines the potential pitfalls of a successful campaign. These include a moral hazard problem that comes into play when entrepreneurs explore both crowdfunding and venture capital investment, which can lead to a breakdown in negotiations between entrepreneurs and VCs, leaving the VC without a potentially lucrative project and the entrepreneur without the VC’s essential financial support, expertise, and guidance. While the brief focuses on reward-based crowdfunding platforms, the pitfalls described herein likely apply as well to peer-to-peer lending, real estate, and equity-crowdfunding platforms too.Publication The U.S. Needs a National Vision for Housing Policy(2019-06-17) Reina, VincentRecent demographic changes—the sharp increase in single-person households, especially among single individuals over the age of 65, as well as racial disparities in homeownership and the increasing cost burden of home rentals—are underscoring the need for a new vision with respect to U.S. housing policy. This Issue Brief lays out several policy prescriptions for improving housing affordability and fairness, both for renters and owners: modifying the federal Housing Choice Voucher program as well as local and state land-use regulations; investing in the maintenance of existing affordable housing stock; making good on HUD’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing requirements so as to reduce fair housing barriers; and promoting financing programs for retrofitting existing low-income housing, to increase energy efficiency and reduce overall costs.Publication Preferred Pharmacy Networks: Health Care Savings on the Margins(2019-05-30) Swanson, AshleyWhile policymakers have talked a lot recently about finding a comprehensive fix for escalating health care costs, such as Medicare-for-all, many economists have been exploring the possibility that the answer for excessive health care spending may rest instead in series of smaller adjustments. This issue brief presents research on one such small fix: preferred pharmacy networks. This is a relatively new tool whereby health insurers aim to steer consumers to lower cost “preferred” pharmacies, where insurers are able to negotiate lower drug prices. The research concludes that preferred pharmacy contracting results in a roughly 1 percent decrease in Medicare Part D drug costs among plans utilizing this tool—a fact that should be encouraging to policymakers concerned about reigning in costs, especially in light of other research demonstrating that health care consumers do not shop around for lower priced care. If this practice of “steering” consumers toward lower cost drugs were applied to the entire pharmaceutical industry, the savings could be much greater.Publication Identifying Cartels that Use the Illinois Brick Ruling as a Shield(2019-03-25) Netessine, Serguei“Identifying Cartels that Use the Illinois Brick Ruling as a Shield” looks at a landmark Supreme Court ruling, known as the Illinois Brick (IB) decision, which bars “indirect purchasers” from bringing antitrust suits against upstream product manufacturers. The research suggests the IB ruling not only reduced the costs associated with antitrust enforcement but has the potential to enable firms upstream in the supply chain to engage in collusion through the use of the wholesale price plus fixed fee structure (WPFF). WPFF allows manufacturers to pay a fixed fee to retailers, compensating them for stocking fewer, higher cost items than they would under perfect competition. The fee acts as a disincentive for retailers to level antitrust suits against manufacturers. And consumers, whose welfare is reduced by the collusion, are forbidden from bringing antitrust action by the IB ruling. The incentive to collude is greater when demand uncertainty for a product is higher, the number of retailers in the market is higher, and the number of manufacturers is lower. Public enforcers of antitrust law can use this knowledge to focus their monitoring efforts on firms embedded in the type of supply chain structures described here while using WPFF contracts.Publication Shining a Light on the Federal Reserve’s Foreign Affairs(2019-02-01) Conti-Brown, Peter; Zaring, David TThroughout its history, the U.S. Federal Reserve has engaged in international diplomacy, outside the bounds of (and sometimes in conflict with) the priorities of the White House and U.S. State Department. In directing monetary policy, the Fed’s primary concern is to benefit the U.S. economy. In the process, the Fed at times acts in concert with foreign central banks, as was the case in setting new bank regulations after the 2008 financial crisis. At other times, the Fed acts in ways that other countries view as detrimental to their economic interests. Either way, the Fed operates with little public accountability and can wind up complicating the work of U.S. diplomats. This issue brief focuses on the questions of whether and how greater oversight of the Fed’s international activities should be pursued. It recommends not an overhaul of the Fed’s structure or the elimination of its role in international affairs but instead calls for greater disclosure of its international activities. The Fed should provide testimony to Congress twice per year on its foreign policies, just as it does for monetary and regulatory policy. This kind of disclosure permits broader discussion of the Fed’s activities without eliminating the benefits of its institutional independence for monetary policy.