Hi, I’m Stefan!
I am a third year Ph.D. student at the University of Vienna. My research fields include applied econometrics, macro public finance, international economics and economic history.
My doctoral thesis focuses on the macroeconomic implications of fiscal federalism. I believe that fiscal decentralization plays an important role for many key aspects of macroeconomics, including stabilization policies, regional disparities, migration and social welfare.
My doctoral advisors are Monika Merz and Kirsten Wandschneider.
Short Bio
Education
PhD in Economics, University of Vienna (VGSE) | 2021 - present
MSc in Economics, University of Wisconsin-Madison | 2019 - 2021
BSc in Economics, University of Vienna | 2015 - 2018
Academic Positions
Graduate Researcher and Lecturer, University of Vienna | 2021 - present
Researcher, Center for Research on the Wisconsin Economy (University of Wisconsin-Madison) | 2020 - 2021
Research Assistant, Oesterreichische Nationalbank | 2017
Research
Work in Progress
“Interstate Firm Relocations and the Role of Unharmonized Income Tax Adoptions”
This paper explores the effects of corporate income tax adoptions on US internal firm relocations in the early 20th century. The historical setting allows the investigation of unharmonized and sequential regional tax adoptions between 1910 and 1930, where 16 states introduced a tax on corporate income. Newly linked employer level data and self-collected firm data together with a structural gravity model enable the causal estimation of tax effects on firm relocation flows. Preliminary results suggest a significant increase in interstate firm flows by 13.02% on average. The strongest effects are found for bordering states. Insignificant estimates of these tax adoptions on government spending suggest that these short-run mobility increases are driven by outflows.
Working Papers
“A Taxing Journey: Tax Adoptions and Interstate Migration in the Early 20th Century” (with Kirsten Wandschneider)
CEPR Discussion Paper | Abstract
This paper examines the relationship between sequential income tax adoptions and interstate migration in US states between 1900 and 1930. Exploiting the sequential introduction of personal and corporate state income taxes, we analyze matched full-count US census data to explore the causal links between state income tax introductions and migration patterns. To guide our empirical approach, we develop a simple migration gravity model with multilateral resistance. Employing a three-way fixed effects Poisson Pseudo-Maximum Likelihood (FE-PPML) framework, we estimate the gravity equation, incorporating a tax introduction indicator. Our findings indicate that the implementation of personal state income taxes lead to an 8.7% increase in internal migration. The adoption of corporate state income taxes is associated with a larger overall rise in internal migration (11.3%) across the population. Our results are robust to other interstate migration trends and hold across different subgroups of the population. We conclude that income tax adoptions had substantial implications for interstate migration during this period, potentially operating through two distinct channels. First, the direct taxation of personal income influenced migration decisions. Second, the introduction of corporate income taxes prompted business relocation, which, in turn, affected migration.“Discretionary Policy under Fiscal Decentralization: A Cross-Country Analysis”
This paper examines the impact of fiscal decentralization on discretionary fiscal policies, focusing on how central and subnational entities respond to negative output gap shocks and their effectiveness. Through a cross-country analysis from 1990 to 2021 across 37 countries, two key findings have been generated. First, countries with greater decentralization experience reduced fluctuations in discretionary expenditures, supporting the claim that highly decentralized nations impose budgetary constraints on central governments. Second, there is a correlation between decentralization and fluctuations in subnational discretionary spending, with increased autonomy leading to more spending changes. However, these increased expenditures have limited or even adverse effects on the output gap, possibly due to the lack of coordination among subnational governments. These findings provide empirical evidence of negative externalities associated with fiscal decentralization.“Migrants of Influence: Skill Levels and the Effects on International Trade” (with Ashim Dubey)
Migration helps to circumnavigate trade barriers, and hence multilateral resistance, by decreasing information asymmetry. Hereby, the skill level of migrants is of first order importance. We develop a tractable model of international trade adjusting for firm-level heterogeneity in worker’s skill level. This helps us to identify a gravity formulation which explicitly models high skilled in-migration as a reduction in iceberg costs. We then test this hypothesis by estimating the structural gravity equation directly with PPML with a full set of fixed effects, allowing to control for the universe of potential multilateral resistances. We find a significant effect of migration on trade flows. This effect is strictly increasing in the skill level. Therefore, providing empirical support to our theoretical conjecture.
Technical Notes and Other Projects
“Identifying Directional Challenges in Gravity Equations with Balanced Dyadic Panel Data”
“The Impact of Increased Unemployment Benefits During the COVID-19 Pandemic” (with Noah Williams, Junjie Guo, Arwa Alalwani, Zhi Jiang, Jiashun Pang and Linhua Zeng) (CROWE University of Wisconsin-Madison, April 2021)