Advancement to Candidacy Presentation:“VAT Pass-Through and Tax Incidence in Housing Markets: Evidence from Santiago, Chile”, by Juan Nicolas Herrera La Rotta, UC Santa Barbara

Speaker

Juan Nicolas Herrera La Rotta, PhD Student, UC Santa Barbara

Biography

Juan Nicolas Herrera earned his Bachelor’s in Economics jointly from Universidad del Rosario in Colombia and the Toulouse School of Economics in France. He also holds a Master’s in Public Policy and Development from the Paris School of Economics and a Master of Arts in Economics from the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). Prior to joining UCSB, he was a Research Fellow in the Research Department of the Inter-American Development Bank. During his graduate studies, he served as an instructor for undergraduate courses in public economics and statistics and worked as a research assistant for Professor Alisa Tazhitdinova. His research interests include public economics, housing markets, labor economics, and applied econometrics. His current research focuses on the incidence of taxation in housing markets.

Event Details

Juan Nicolas will be presenting his Advancement to Candidacy paper, “VAT Pass-Through and Tax Incidence in Housing Markets: Evidence from Santiago, Chile”. To access the Advancement paper, you must have an active UCSB NetID and password.

Abstract and JEL Codes

Using property-level data covering the universe of residential sales in the Metropolitan Region of Santiago, Chile, we estimate the pass-through of a large and salient Value Added Tax (VAT) on housing selling prices. A new 19% VAT increased prices for treated properties by 11.4% compared to the pre-reform period. Using a subsample of dwellings for which the tax base closely matches the selling price, we estimate an average effect of 9.3%, which may suggest only a partial pass-through of the tax to consumers.

JEL Codes: H22, R31, R21, R38