Under the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001, most U.S. taxpayers received a tax rebate between July and September, 2001. The week in which the rebate was mailed was based on the second-to-last digit of the taxpayer's Social Security number, a digit that is effectively

added to the CE Survey, and the staff of the BLS, especially Mary McCarthy, for expeditiously adding the questions. We also thank for their comments Miles Kimball, Jeffrey Kling, David Laibson, Matthew Shapiro;

Theoretical analysis of the connection between taxation and risk-taking has mainly been concerned with the effect of taxes on portfolio decisions of consumers, Mossin (1968b) and Stiglitz (1969). However, there are some problems which are not naturally classified under this

Measures of inequality are used by economists to answer a wide range of questions. Is the distribution of income more equal than it was in the past? Are underdeveloped countries characterised by greater inequality than advanced countries? Do taxes lead to greater equality in the distri-

of the individual taxpayer. Further, by reducing his disposable income, taxes reduce his savings and thus the capital stock. Internal debt has both of these effects as well as a further reduction in the capital stock arising from the substitution of government debt for physical capital in individual portfolios.

We use a new panel data set of credit card accounts to analyze how consumers responded to the 2001 federal income tax rebates. We estimate the monthly response of credit card payments, spending, and debt, exploiting the unique, randomized timing of the rebate disbursement. We find that, on average

countries; in particular, the effective marginal tax rate on labor income. The population of countries considered is the G-7 countries, which are major advanced industrial countries. The surprising fi nding is that this marginal tax rate accounts for the predominance of differences at points in time

This paper examines the impact of the Tax Reform Act of 1986 (TRA86), which included an expansion of the earned income tax credit, on the labor force participation and hours of work of single women with children. We identify the impact of TRA86 by comparing the change in labor supply of single

This paper estimates the extent to which legal fees prevent liquidity-constrained households from declaring bankruptcy. To do so, it studies how the 2001 and 2008 income tax rebates affected consumer bankruptcy filings. We exploit the randomized timing of the rebate checks and estimate

the permanent income hypothesis by spending income shocks. Agarwal, Liu and Souleles (2007) directly test the importance of such liquidity constraints within a sample of credit card borrowers receiving tax rebates, finding that those most likely to be credit constrained (those with low card limits and high