Inattention and the Taxation Bias
研究发现，纳税人对税收的注意力不足会导致税收政策选择出现时间不一致问题，使均衡税率高于社会最优水平，产生3到8个百分点的税收偏差，影响税制累进性和社会福利。
Abstract This paper shows that inattention to taxes generates a time-inconsistency problem in the choice of tax policy, leading to higher taxes in equilibrium. These discretionary tax increases are inefficient as they are deviations from the socially optimal commitment policy. We call these deviations a taxation bias. Combining sufficient statistics and structural approaches, we quantify the magnitude of this policy distortion for the U.S. redistributive tax-transfer system. We find that the taxation bias ranges between 3 and 8 percentage points, alters tax-transfer progressivity, and has significant welfare effects. Overall, our findings shed new light on the implications of inattention and misperceptions.