Simon Essig Aberg

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

My primary field of research is public economics. Some topics of interest include fiscal federalism, environmental policy, education policy, and philanthropy.

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" (2023).

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

"Quantifying the Inefficiency of Multi-unit Auctions for Normal Goods" (2021).

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