Paul Rothstein
Senior Economist
United States Federal Trade Commission*
Bureau of Economics
600 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20580
prothstein@ftc.gov

*The views expressed on this page and on any documents attached to this page are my own and not necessarily those of the Federal Trade Commission or any individual Commissioner.

• Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley.
• B.A., Yale University.

Economic analysis forces you to think about the incentives that all sides face in any transaction.  It sounds easy, but it takes practice.  Here I am practicing in Taipei.

Discontinuous Payoffs, Shared Resources, and Games of Fiscal Competition:  Existence of Pure Strategy Nash Equilibrium, Journal of Public Economic Theory, Volume 9, No. 2. (2007), pp. 335-368.
Group Welfare and the Formation of a Common Labor Market:  Some Global Results (with Gary Hoover), International Tax and Public Finance, Volume 13, No. 1. (2006), pp. 3-23.
Transferable Tax Credits in Missouri: An Analytical Review (with Nathan Wineinger), Regional Economic Development, Volume 3, No.2 (2007), pp. 53-74.  This is a publication of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.  Some additional material from the original appendix is here.
The Taking of Prosperity?  Kelo v. New London and the Economics of Eminent Domain (with Tom Garrett), The Regional Economist, January 2007.  This is a publication of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
Possibility, Impossibility and History in the Origins of the Marriage Tax (with Marcus Berliant), National Tax Journal , Volume 56, No. 2. (2003), pp. 303-317.
Optimal Civil Penalties: Theory and Applications to Consumer Protection, June 2009. Compensation for Deception About Quality, October 2008.

Undergraduate:

• Public Finance (Economics 445/Economics 5451), Spring 2007.

• Federalism and the Economics of Public Policy (Economics 347W), Spring 2007.

Graduate:

• Taxation and Local Public Sector Economics (Economics 544), Fall 2006.

• Lecture notes on Taxation (Fall 2006 revisions).
• Lecture notes on Local Public Sector Economics (Fall 2006 revisions).

• Market Failures and State Institutions (Political Science 577), Summer 2006.

• Empirical Public Finance (Economics 547), Fall 2006.
• Course Description, Reading List, Lecture Outline.

• Visit my economics blog.
• Abusive tax shelters -- technical, but you can get the general idea (2002-65 was reported on by David Cay Johnston in The New York Times).  The people who invent these things have lost all perspective.  Can you say, "legitimate business purpose"?
• Frivolous tax arguments (from the IRS).  Again, that thing about perspective.
• The Long Term Capital Management tax ruling featuring "economic substance" with Joe Stiglitz (August 2004).
• Winning the Battle But Losing the War(excerpt from Rossotti, Report to the IRS Oversight Board, Assessment of the IRS and the Tax System, September 2002).  Did you know there is an IRS Oversight Board at Treasury?   You do now.   The full report is at http://www.treas.gov/irsob/index.html.

• Effective Federal Tax Rates 1979-1997
• Effective Federal Tax Rates 1979-2000
• Effective Federal Tax Rates 1979-2002
• Effective Federal Tax Rates Under Current Law 2001 to 2014 (alas, this time they did not compute the share of after-tax income by income quintiles).
• Effective Federal Tax Rates 1979-2004 and Excel spreadsheet of the data
• Effective Federal Tax Rates 1979-2005 and Excel spreadsheet of the data
• Effective Federal Tax Rates 1979-2005 with high income supplement.
  

• A book from 1900 I personally scanned on the history of taxation in Missouri (big file -- 17M).
• Jules Dupuit's, "On the Measurement of the Utility of Public Works" from 1844.
  

• The abjuration of Galileo (or, what can happen when the truth is just another special interest, and poorly funded).
  

• Family Pictures.