Kyle Rozema

Taxing Consumption and the Take-up of Public Assistance: The Case of Cigarette Taxes and Food Stamps

We exploit cigarette tax variation across US states from 2001 to 2012 to show how taxing inelastic consumption goods can induce low-income households to enroll in public assistance programs. Using a novel household panel of monthly food stamp enrollment from the Current Population Survey, we enrich standard cigarette tax difference-in-differences models with an additional control group: nonsmoking households. Smoking households are treated with higher taxes, while nonsmoking households are not. Marginal smoking households respond to increases in cigarette taxes by taking up food stamps at rates higher than smoking households in other states and nonsmoking households in the same state.

Who Benefits from Repealing Tampon Taxes? Empirical Evidence from New Jersey: Who Benefits from Repealing Tampon Taxes?

Many state and local governments exclude some medical products from the sales tax base, including some that are primarily used by men such as hair growth products. However, tampons and other menstrual hygiene products are subject to sales taxes in most states. A recent social movement advocates for the repeal of these “tampon taxes” and several class action lawsuits have been filed against states citing equal protection violations. In this article, we use the 2005 elimination of menstrual hygiene products from the sales tax base in New Jersey as a natural experiment to study who benefits from the repeal of tampon taxes. We find that the tax break is fully shifted to consumers, but that the tax break is not distributed equally. Low‐income consumers enjoy a benefit from the repeal of the tax by more than the size of the repealed tax. For high‐income consumers, the tax break is shared equally with producers. The results suggest that repealing tampon taxes removes an unequal tax burden and could make menstrual hygiene products more accessible for low‐income consumers.

The Legal Academy's Ideological Uniformity

We compare the ideological balance of the legal academy to the ideological balance of the legal profession. To do so, we match professors listed in the Association of American Law Schools Directory of Law Teachers and lawyers listed in the Martindale-Hubbell directory to a measure of political ideology based on political donations. We find that 15% of law professors, compared to 35% of lawyers, are conservative. After controlling for individual characteristics, however, this 20 percentage point ideological gap narrows to around 13 percentage points. We argue that this ideological uniformity marginalizes law professors, but that it may not be possible to improve the ideological balance of the legal academy without sacrificing other values.

Influence and Ideology in the American Judiciary: Evidence from Supreme Court Law Clerks

Supreme Court justices employ law clerks to help them perform their duties. We study whether these clerks influence how justices vote in the cases they hear. We exploit the timing of the clerkship hiring process to link variation in clerk ideology to variation in judicial voting. To measure clerk ideology, we match clerks to the universe of disclosed political donations. We find that clerks influence judicial voting, especially in cases that are high-profile, legally significant, or when justices are more evenly divided. We interpret these results to suggest that clerk influence occurs through persuasion rather than delegation of decision-making authority.

Who Would Benefit from Repealing Tampon Taxes? Empirical Evidence from New Jersey

Many state and local governments exclude some medical products from the sales tax base, including some that are primarily used by men such as hair growth products. However, tampons and other menstrual hygiene products are subject to sales taxes in most states. A recent social movement advocates for the repeal of these “tampon taxes�? and several class action lawsuits have been filed against states citing Equal Protection violations. In this article, we use the 2005 elimination of menstrual hygiene products from the sales tax base in New Jersey as a natural experiment to study who benefits from the repeal of tampon taxes. We find that the tax break is fully shifted to consumers, but that the tax break is not distributed equally. Low-income consumers enjoy a benefit from the repeal of the tax by more than the size of the repealed tax. For high-income consumers, the tax break is shared equally with producers. The results suggest that repealing tampon taxes removes an unequal tax burden and could make menstrual hygiene products more accessible for low-income consumers.

The Effect of Tax Expenditures on Automatic Stabilizers: Methods and Evidence: The Effect of Tax Expenditures on Automatic Stabilizers

We study the effect of tax expenditures on the stabilizing power of the tax system. We propose a micro‐simulation strategy that exploits links that we identify between automatic stabilizers, tax expenditures, and effective marginal tax rates. Using U.S. tax return micro data from 2000 to 2010, we estimate that, on average, the mortgage interest deduction and the charitable contributions deduction decreased the ability of the tax system to absorb fluctuations in aggregate consumption by an average of 7.4 percent and 3.9 percent, respectively.

The Political Ideologies of Law Clerks and their Judges

We study the political ideology of judicial law clerks using a novel dataset that combines the most comprehensive data sources on political ideology and the identity of U.S. federal law clerks. First, we examine the distribution of clerks’ ideology and find that clerks tend to be disproportionately liberal, with clerks on lower courts being more liberal on average than clerks for higher courts. Second, we find that judges tend to consistently hire clerks with similar ideologies and that those ideologies track available measures of the judge’s own ideology. Finally, we develop a dynamic clerk-based measure of judicial ideology and document its value as a complement to existing approaches.

On the Measurement of Federal Taxes as Automatic Stabilizers

We develop a microsimulation statistic for the size of the tax systems automatic stabilizers that describes the absorption effect of federal taxes relative to the response of aggregate consumption to income fluctuations. The statistic improves upon previous microsimulation statistics by taking into account whether the baseline consumption response is high or low. Using US tax return data, we find that, on average between 1986 and 2010, the tax system decreased the response of aggregate consumption to income fluctuations by 23.6%. The tax system has played a much larger role in stabilizing the macroeconomy than previously thought.

Good Cop, Bad Cop: An Analysis of Chicago Civilian Allegations of Police Misconduct

Preventing police officer misconduct, while giving police officers the incentives and flexibility to fight crime, is a notoriously difficult challenge. We explore whether civilian complaints can help identify and reduce police officer misconduct. Using data on over 50,000 civilian allegations against police officers in Chicago over a 13-year period, we find that civilian allegations are strongly associated with (1) non-civilian allegations of misconduct, such as allegations from supervisors, and (2) the likelihood of and outcomes in civil rights litigation. We conclude that civilian allegations contain a strong signal of police officer misconduct. In particular, lawsuits against police officers are external and quantifiable measures of officer misconduct and typically arise from serious incidents. We further find that, if an administrative body sustains an allegation against an officer, that officer’s civilian allegation rate decreases and the probability that he or she exits the force increases. We conclude that civilian allegations against police officers in Chicago can be better utilized to prevent misconduct.

The Effect of Tax Expenditures on Automatic Stabilizers: Methods and Evidence

We analyze the effect of tax expenditures on the stabilizing power of the tax system. We propose a microsimulation strategy which exploits links that we identify between automatic stabilizers, tax expenditures, and effective marginal tax rates. Using the Survey of Consumer Finances from 1988 to 2009, we estimate that, on average, the Mortgage Interest Deduction and the Charitable Contributions Deduction increased the sensitivity of consumption to income fluctuations from a baseline of 0.14 by 1.13% and 0.97%, respectively.