Simon Essig Aberg

I am a Business Economics Ph.D. student at Harvard University.

My fields are public economics, industrial organization, and econometrics. My research focuses on policy design & implementation, philanthropy & the social impact sector, and empirical methodology.

Working Papers

"Tax Elasticities of Top Donors: Evidence from Family Foundations and Donor-Advised Funds" (2024).

Top donors—high net-worth individuals who give through a family foundation or donor-advised fund—constitute the fastest growing segment of charitable giving in the United States. Using a novel database of foundation tax filings, I document facts about top donors, estimate how top donors respond to tax incentives over time, and evaluate the welfare effects of policy changes. I focus on two sets of tax incentives: the tax subsidy for a top donor’s contributions to their foundation, and the tax penalty imposed if a foundation’s charitable disbursements average less than 5% of assets. Employing a new method to recover dynamic elasticities, I find that a 1% increase in the tax subsidy for top donor contributions would increase contributions to foundations by 0.67% in present value terms, but would only raise charitable disbursements by 0.37%. Additionally, I find that a one percentage point increase in the 5% minimum payout rate would increase charitable disbursements by 0.33% in present value terms, primarily financed by foundation assets. I discuss how these findings relate to recent legislative proposals regarding the regulation of foundations and donor-advised funds.

"Pulp Friction: The Value of Quantity Contracts in Decentralized Markets" (2024).

(with Olivier Darmouni and Juha Tolvanen). Revise and resubmit, RAND Journal of Economics.

"Quantifying the Inefficiency of Multi-unit Auctions for Normal Goods" (2024).

(with Brian Baisa). Revise and resubmit, Journal of Economic Theory.