Daniel Overbeck
Mailing address:
University of Mannheim
Department of Economics
L7, 3-5, Room: 231
68161 Mannheim, Germany
E-mail:
daniel.overbeck "at" uni-mannheim.de
Links:
GESS Website
Twitter
Welcome!
I am a PhD student in Economics at the University of Mannheim.
My main research interests are in Public Economics and Development Economics.
Curriculum Vitae
Publications:
Place-based policies, structural change and female labor: Evidence from India's Special Economic Zones
(with Johannes Gallé , Nadine Riedel and Tobias Seidel)
Journal of Public Economics, 2024
This paper quantifies the local economic impact of Special Economic Zones (SEZs) that were established in India between 2005-2013. Based on a novel data set that combines census data on the universe of Indian firms with georeferenced data on SEZs, we find that SEZs increased manufacturing and service employment with positive spillover effects up to 10km. This employment gain was paralleled by a decline in local agricultural employment, in particular of women, suggesting that the policy contributed to structural change. We find no evidence for heterogeneous effects between privately and publicly run SEZs or zones with different industry denominations.
[Open Access JPubE] [STEG/CEPR Working Paper] [Video Interview with faculti.net] [VoxDev Blog]
Working Papers:
Bargaining Over Taxes
(with Eliya Lungu)
Job Market Paper
IGC grant (GBP 10,000)
This paper shows that bargaining over tax payments is an important feature of tax compliance and enforcement in lower income countries. Analyzing the universe of administrative tax filings from Zambia, we document sharp bunching in (i) dominated regions above tax schedule discontinuities, inconsistent with standard models of tax compliance and (ii) at round number tax payments, implying that certain payments are being targeted. Additional evidence from our own survey suggests that discussing tax payments with tax officials before filing taxes is widespread, consistent with tax payments being the outcomes of bargaining. Such bargaining over taxes is consistent with fact (ii), as bargaining outcomes are often round and salient numbers, and with fact (i), because tax schedule discontinuities restrict the set of feasible bargaining outcomes. Finally, we generalize the conventional Allingham & Sandmo (1972) model to allow for bargaining as a mode of tax compliance. We show that bargaining leads to Pareto-improvements for both taxpayers and the state as long as state capacity is sufficiently low.
Carbon taxation and firm behavior in emerging economies: Evidence from South Africa
(with Johannes Gallé, Rodrigo Oliveira, Nadine Riedel and Edson Severnini)
UNU-WIDER grant (USD 10,000)
This paper provides the first comprehensive analysis of how firms in emerging economies respond to carbon taxation, leveraging detailed administrative data from South Africa – a potential trailblazer for other developing countries with limited state capacity amid the growing global push for carbon pricing. We examine the dynamic impacts of the carbon tax on firm-level outcomes – such as profits, sales, capital, and labor inputs – across manufac- turing and mining firms, which are key sectors in the context of the carbon tax. Contrary to concerns that carbon taxes may hinder economic growth or reduce employment, our findings show no evidence of negative average impacts on firm performance or jobs. However, this overall result masks significant heterogeneity in the tax’s effects across sectors, driven by the sector-specific design elements of the South African carbon tax. Firms expecting higher effective tax rates may have intensified their use of emission-intensive machinery and depre- ciated capital in anticipation of the tax. This behavior appears to stem from firms resolving regulatory uncertainty or seeking to recover costs from stranded assets.
Taxing FDI in a developing economy: the case of informality
This paper introduces a new model which captures the eff ect of foreign direct investment (FDI) on a developing economy with an informal sector. The informal sector evolves endogenously as economic agents choose between working and setting up a firm and whether to do so formally or informally. FDI induces a uniform increase in labor costs but heterogenous productivity increases for domestic formal firms. Accordingly, some of these fi rms may opt for informality with increased FDI. This reduction in the domestic tax base may off set any revenue gains from additional FDI. It is shown that the revenue-neutral tax rate on FDI is decreasing in the government’s efficiency in screening tax avoidance, as more efficient governments are able to attenuate the increase in informality. The empirical analysis supports the key conclusions of the model.
Work in Progress:
IGC grant (GBP 2,000)
News and upcoming talks:
I will present my job market paper “Bargaining Over Taxes” at the following events: