Law & Economics Research Weekly

A weekly feed of newly published, posted, or revised scholarship—not a general news digest.

Issue 00228 July 2026

Five new papers on antitrust, tax transparency, social insurance, and fiscal capacity

Research Weekly is a discovery feed for newly released law-and-economics scholarship. Each entry identifies the publication status, source date, research question, method, principal contribution, and an interpretive caution before linking to the primary repository record.

01 · Latest academic releases

New and recently surfaced research

This issue collects working papers newly surfaced in the current NBER feed. The primary records identify July 2026 as the issue month but do not supply an exact posting day; the entries therefore reproduce the source metadata rather than treating the archive's check date as a release date.

Antitrust · Behavioral law and economicsJuly 2026 · exact posting day not supplied

Who Wants to Break Up Big Firms? Harm, Fairness, and the Demand for Antitrust

Ricardo Perez-Truglia and Jeffrey Yusof

NBER Working Paper 35503

Research question: Which beliefs—market share, consumer harm, unfair competition, or corporate image—shape public support for antitrust intervention?
Method / data: A preregistered information-provision experiment with 4,000 U.S. households uses five real antitrust cases and randomized belief treatments.
Principal contribution: Information about consumer harm produces the most systematic support for plaintiffs, break-ups, conduct remedies, and broader antitrust policy, while market-share information alone has no meaningful effect.

Consumer harmPublic opinionInformation experimentRemedies

Reading caution
The experiment measures stated policy preferences in a U.S. sample, not regulator behavior or the welfare effects of actual remedies; results may depend on the selected cases and information frames.

Primary record · NBER ↗

Tax · Financial transparencyJuly 2026 · exact posting day not supplied

Global Financial Transparency and Offshore Wealth Accumulation

Annette Alstadsæter, Niels Johannesen, Ségal Le Guern Herry, and Gabriel Zucman

NBER Working Paper 35505

Research question: Does automatic exchange of bank-account information deter wealthy taxpayers from moving assets offshore or using more complex ownership structures?
Method / data: Linked Norwegian administrative data trace wealth flows to offshore financial centers before and after the expansion of automatic information exchange.
Principal contribution: The authors report fewer new offshore transfers by newly wealthy taxpayers, a weaker link between offshore flows and reduced domestic tax payments, and no offsetting rise in complex ownership structures.

Offshore wealthTax evasionInformation exchangeAdministrative data

Reading caution
The evidence comes from Norway and a major international reporting reform; institutional capacity, pre-reform enforcement, and available avoidance channels may limit external validity.

Primary record · NBER ↗

Social insurance · LaborJuly 2026 · exact posting day not supplied

The Welfare Effects of Conditioning the Potential Duration of UI Benefits on Prior Work History

Leonard Goff and Simon Quach

NBER Working Paper 35524

Research question: Should unemployment-insurance benefit duration vary with a claimant's prior work history rather than rise uniformly?
Method / data: Canadian administrative records from 1997–2018 support 25 regression-discontinuity designs at thresholds where prior hours worked change potential benefit duration.
Principal contribution: An additional benefit week lengthens unemployment by 0.30 weeks and costs the government $96 on average; the estimated fiscal externality of a uniform extension is 76% larger than one targeted at claimants with short work histories.

Unemployment insuranceRegression discontinuityBenefit durationWelfare

Reading caution
The welfare comparison combines local threshold estimates with a sufficient-statistics framework; its policy ranking depends on marginal-value assumptions and the Canadian UI setting.

Primary record · NBER ↗

Corporate tax · DistributionJuly 2026 · exact posting day not supplied

Personal Holding Companies, Tax Progressivity, and Inequality

Marius A. K. Ring, David G. Seim, and Gabriel Zucman

NBER Working Paper 35534

Research question: How do closely held personal holding companies affect effective tax progressivity and measured top-income inequality?
Method / data: Twenty years of linked firm-owner administrative microdata from Sweden and Norway are combined with event studies of shocks to operating firms' value added.
Principal contribution: The paper finds that holding companies shelter around half of dividend distributions from individual income tax and that retained corporate income materially changes measured effective tax rates and cross-country inequality comparisons.

Holding companiesTax deferralTop incomesLinked administrative data

Reading caution
The estimates rely on institutional definitions, private-business valuations, and Nordic tax rules; comparisons with the United States require attention to different anti-deferral regimes.

Primary record · NBER ↗

Property tax · State capacityJuly 2026 · exact posting day not supplied

Does Progressivity Raise Tax Capacity? Experimental Evidence from the D.R. Congo

Gabriel Z. Tourek, Arthur Laroche, Augustin Bergeron, Joana Naritomi, Jonathan L. Weigel, and Marina Mavungu Ngoma

NBER Working Paper 35536

Research question: Can a progressive property-tax schedule raise revenue and compliance in a low-income setting, and what enforcement is needed to make effective burdens progressive?
Method / data: A citywide field experiment randomly assigns neighborhoods in Kananga to progressive or proportional tax schedules, with cross-randomized information treatments and later targeted enforcement.
Principal contribution: The progressive schedule raises revenue by 56% relative to the proportional schedule; lower liabilities improve compliance at the bottom, while targeted enforcement is needed to align effective rates with statutory progressivity at the top.

Property taxationField experimentComplianceEnforcement

Reading caution
The initial progressive schedule still produces regressive effective rates before targeted enforcement. Results come from one city and a government-research partnership, so implementation capacity is part of the treatment context.

Primary record · NBER ↗

02 · Methods across the issue

How the claims were produced

Preregistered information experiment

Used to separate the effects of perceived harm, market share, fairness, and reputation on antitrust preferences.

Linked administrative data

Used to follow offshore wealth, firm ownership, retained income, tax payments, and benefit claims at fine institutional detail.

Regression discontinuity

Used to estimate the local fiscal and behavioral effects of additional unemployment-insurance duration at statutory thresholds.

Citywide field experiment

Used to compare progressive and proportional property-tax schedules and isolate the complementary role of enforcement.

Sufficient-statistics welfare analysis

Used to translate estimated behavioral and fiscal responses into a comparison of alternative benefit-allocation rules.

Open Methods Toolkit →

03 · Research watchlist

Questions to track

01
Whether antitrust preferences induced by information persist beyond stated surveys and influence voting, complaints, or enforcement legitimacy.
02
Whether automatic information exchange shifts avoidance toward assets, intermediaries, or jurisdictions not covered by the reporting architecture.
03
How unemployment-insurance targeting changes when liquidity value, job quality, and general-equilibrium labor-market effects are incorporated.
04
Which anti-deferral and valuation rules can tax retained personal-company income without discouraging productive investment.
05
Whether progressive property-tax schedules remain revenue-enhancing when implemented without unusually intensive data collection and targeted enforcement.

Editorial rule: Research Weekly prioritizes peer-reviewed articles, accepted manuscripts, working papers, and discussion papers. General news, routine regulatory announcements, and cases appear only when a new academic study centrally analyzes them. Missing dates, versions, or evidence are disclosed rather than inferred.