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Nathaniel Hendren
@nhendren82
Professor of Economics at MIT. Co-Director of Policy Impacts (policyimpacts.org) and Opportunity Insights. Co-Lead Editor of the JPUBEC (He/him/his)
economics.mit.edu/people/faculty…
Born December 13, 1982
Joined July 2016
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    Nathaniel Hendren
    @nhendren82
    Jul 18, 2024
    🚨*New Paper Alert*🚨 What are the most effective ways to fight climate change? What are the returns to subsidies for wind and solar? What about EV subsidies or energy efficient appliance rebates? How about raising revenue through fuel taxes or cap and trade auctions? 1/:
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    Nathaniel Hendren
    @nhendren82
    Jun 14, 2023
    New Paper Alert 🚨 We estimate the returns to IRS tax audits across the income distribution. We find $1 of IRS spending on audits of top earners delivers more than $12 of tax revenue. Along the way, we provide new evidence of the strong specific deterrence effects of audits. 1/:
    2.1M
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    Nathaniel Hendren
    @nhendren82
    Oct 12, 2022
    Some professional news: I’ll be joining @MITEcon next summer! I’m excited to join such an amazing group of colleagues. MIT will also form a new home for @PolicyImpacts. We’ll be hiring and expanding in the months ahead, and have some exciting research on the horizon…stay tuned.
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    Nathaniel Hendren
    @nhendren82
    Jun 14, 2023
    Replying to @nhendren82
    More than $500 billion in tax obligations go unpaid each year in the US. Most of these liabilities are concentrated among high-income taxpayers. Can additional spending on audits recoup those unpaid taxes? How do the returns to audits vary across the income distribution? 2/
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    Nathaniel Hendren
    @nhendren82
    Jul 26, 2020
    I have a joke, but I'm just too sad. Connect with your friends, students, and colleagues in these troubling times. Take the opportunity to tell them what they mean to you. The future is bright because of what they all have to offer to the world. Make sure they know it.
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    Nathaniel Hendren
    @nhendren82
    Sep 6, 2021
    My new working paper out today with @djh1202 shows how adverse selection has unraveled private markets for financial alternatives to student debt that would reduce the risk of investing in college. scholar.harvard.edu/files/hendren/… Thread summary below: (1/n)
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    Nathaniel Hendren
    @nhendren82
    Jun 14, 2023
    Replying to @nhendren82
    One key component: audited taxpayers pay more in taxes for at least 14 years after an initial audit. We use randomized audits to measure these deterrence effects. For every $1 an audited person pays during their audit, they pay $3 more on their taxes in the subsequent years. 5/
    53K
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    Nathaniel Hendren
    @nhendren82
    Aug 11, 2020
    Do you have a causal effect and want to say something about welfare? Use the MVPF. My new JEP paper with Amy Finkelstein shows how to do it:
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    NBER
    @nberpubs
    Aug 11, 2020
    The marginal value of public funds approach offers a useful tool for empirical welfare analysis, from Amy Finkelstein and @nhendren82 nber.org/papers/w27640
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    Nathaniel Hendren
    @nhendren82
    May 7, 2020
    Excited to launch the @OppInsights Economic Tracker that measures real-time economic activity using anonymized data from private companies. We hope the data is useful to researchers and policymakers for tracking the economy through this crisis and beyond. tracker.opportunityinsights.org
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    Nathaniel Hendren
    @nhendren82
    Jun 14, 2023
    Replying to @nhendren82
    While audit costs rise with taxpayer income, the returns rise even more. When we consider the returns to marginal audit expansions and incorporate specific deterrence effects, we find 5:1 returns at the bottom of the income distribution and 12:1 at the top. 4/
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    Nathaniel Hendren
    @nhendren82
    Jul 12, 2021
    Today, @bsprungkeyser and I launched Policy Impacts. Policy Impacts promotes and supports the use of the Marginal Value of Public Funds (MVPF), a methodology for comparing the cost effectiveness of a wide range of public policies. [1/8]
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    Policy Impacts
    @PolicyImpacts
    Jul 12, 2021
    We are excited to introduce you to Policy Impacts, a new research and policy organization dedicated to improving government decision-making through rigorous, standardized policy evaluation. [🧵- 1/9]
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    Nathaniel Hendren
    @nhendren82
    Apr 28, 2020
    Congratulations to Melissa Dell on winning the Clark Medal! aeaweb.org/about-aea/hono… Incredibly well-deserved. For those of you looking to get familiar with her amazing work, this paper is legendary: scholar.harvard.edu/files/dell/fil…
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    Nathaniel Hendren
    @nhendren82
    Jul 22, 2019
    3 years and thousands of hours of hard work by an amazing team all summarized in 3 letters :-)
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    Nathaniel Hendren
    @nhendren82
    Jun 14, 2023
    Replying to @nhendren82
    In joint work with Will Boning, @bsprungkeyser, and Ellen Stuart, we use detailed cost and revenue data for the universe of IRS audits. We focus on measuring the returns to in-person audits of individual taxpayers. 3/
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