Greetings. My name is Paul Rothstein, and I am the Section Chief for Financial Institutions and Regulatory Policy in the Office of Research at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.  The CFPB is an independent bureau within the Federal Reserve System.  The opinions expressed on this site and in material linked from this site are not necessarily those of the CFPB.

Please contact me at:
paul.rothstein@cfpb.gov

Curriculum Vitae

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Education:

• Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley.
• B.A., Yale University.

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Selected Publications and Official Reports:

• Consumer Financial Protection, Chapter 18 in Steven Payson (ed.), Public Economics in the United States [3 volumes]:  How the Federal Government Analyzes and Influences the Economy, Praeger/ABC-CLIO Publishers, forthcoming.

• Report to Congress Under Section 319 of the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003 (listed contributor), December 2012.  Federal Trade Commission report presenting results from a national study on the accuracy of consumer credit reports.

• A Review of Food Marketing to Children and Adolescents, Follow-Up Report (listed contributor), December 2012.  Federal Trade Commission report on food and beverage industry marketing expenditures and activities directed to children and teens.

• Report to Congress Under Section 319 of the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003 (with Peter Vander Nat), December 2010.  Federal Trade Commission report describing a methodology for a national study on the accuracy of consumer credit reports.

• Commentary (on "States in Fiscal Distress" by Robert Inman), Regional Economic Development , Volume 6, No. 1. (2010), pp. 81-87. 

• Discontinuous Payoffs, Shared Resources, and Games of Fiscal Competition:  Existence of Pure Strategy Nash Equilibrium, Journal of Public Economic Theory, Volume 9, No. 2. (2007), pp. 335-368. 

• Transferable Tax Credits in Missouri: An Analytical Review (with Nathan Wineinger), Regional Economic Development, Volume 3, No.2. (2007), pp. 53-74.  Some additional material from the original appendix is here.

• The Taking of Prosperity?  Kelo v. New London and the Economics of Eminent Domain (with Tom Garrett), The Regional Economist, January 2007.  This is a publication of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

• Group Welfare and the Formation of a Common Labor Market:  Some Global Results (with Gary Hoover), International Tax and Public Finance, Volume 13, No. 1. (2006), pp. 3-23.

• Possibility, Impossibility and History in the Origins of the Marriage Tax (with Marcus Berliant), National Tax Journal , Volume 56, No. 2. (2003), pp. 303-317.

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Old But Not Forgotten:

Order Restricted Preferences and Majority Rule, Social Choice and Welfare, Volume 7, No. 4 (1990), pp. 331-342.

Forgotten:

The Demand for Education with Power Equalizing Aid:  Estimation and Simulation, Journal of Public Economics, Volume 49, No. 2 (1992), pp. 135-162.

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Old Course Web Sites:

Undergraduate:

• Public Finance (Economics 445/Economics 5451), Spring 2007.

• Federalism and the Economics of Public Policy (Economics 347W), Spring 2007.

Graduate:

• Taxation and Local Public Sector Economics (Economics 544), Fall 2006.

• Lecture notes on Taxation (Fall 2006 revisions).
• Lecture notes on Local Public Sector Economics (Fall 2006 revisions).

• Market Failures and State Institutions (Political Science 577), Summer 2006.

• Empirical Public Finance (Economics 547), Fall 2006.
• Course Description, Reading List, Lecture Outline.

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Miscellaneous

• Abusive tax shelters -- technical, but you can get the general idea (2002-65 was reported on by David Cay Johnston in The New York Times).  The people who invent these things have lost all perspective.  Can you say, "legitimate business purpose"?
• Frivolous tax arguments (from the IRS).  Again, that thing about perspective.
• The Long Term Capital Management tax ruling featuring "economic substance" with Joe Stiglitz (August 2004).
• Winning the Battle But Losing the War(excerpt from Rossotti, Report to the IRS Oversight Board, Assessment of the IRS and the Tax System, September 2002).  Did you know there is an IRS Oversight Board at Treasury?   You do now.   The full report is at http://www.treas.gov/irsob/index.html.

• Effective Federal Tax Rates 1979-2002
• Effective Federal Tax Rates Under Current Law 2001 to 2014 (alas, this time they did not compute the share of after-tax income by income quintiles).
• Effective Federal Tax Rates 1979-2005 and Excel spreadsheet of the data
• Effective Federal Tax Rates 1979-2005 with high income supplement.
• Trends in the Distribution of Household Income Between 1979 and 2007 (October 2011)

• A book from 1900 I personally scanned on the history of taxation in Missouri (big file -- 17M).
• Jules Dupuit's, "On the Measurement of the Utility of Public Works" from 1844.

• The abjuration of Galileo (or, what can happen when the truth is just another special interest, and poorly funded).

• Some Pictures.

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Last updated 2/13/2014