The Impact of Opportunity Zones on Commercial Investment and Economic Activity

时间：5月10日(周三) 12:00-13:00

线上：Zoom（发送邮件至 lujing@nsd.pku.edu.cn 获取线上会议链接）

主讲人：Naomi Feldman

参与老师：（国发院）李力行，席天扬，徐化愚，于航，王轩，易君健
        （经院） 刘冲，吴群锋，曹光宇

论文摘要：A provision of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 offered tax incentives for investing in certain low-income areas in the United States called Opportunity Zones. The goal of this provision was to spur private investment in OZs in order to improve the economic well-being of their residents. Using a regression discontinuity design and data on the universe of all significant commercial investments in the United States, we find that OZ eligibility led to no statistically significant increase in investment in OZs. We can rule out at the 95 percent confidence level an increase in the probability of investment of more than 1.3 percentage points (4.9%), an increase in the number of annualized investments of more than 0.01 (6.7%), and an increase in annualized dollars of investment of more than $0.16 million per census tract (8.2%). These findings are supported by data from Mastercard that show no evidence of increased business activity nor consumer spending. Overall, our findings suggest that the impact of the OZ place-based investment incentives on economic improvement has thus far been limited.

主讲人介绍：Naomi Feldman is an Associate Professor of Economics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Department of Economics. Professor Feldman is a public finance economist who studies how individuals and firms react to changes in tax policy. In particular, she is interested in how the complexity of the tax code impacts these behavioral responses. Before joining the Hebrew University, she was employed at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in Washington, DC and spent a year at the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) in the Executive Office of the President as a Senior Economist in Tax Policy. In 2021, she began serving as co-editor of the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, and was also appointed to be a voting member on the Bank of Israel's Monetary Policy Committee. Professor Feldman holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her pre-doctoral studies were at University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana where she earned a B.S. in economics and French literature. 主页：https://www.naomifeldman.com/