Terrence R. Chorvat (George Mason)
- B.A., Northwestern
-
J.D.1989, Chicago
-
LL.M. (Taxation) 1992, NYU
Terry began his academic career as an acting assistant professor at NYU. He will be a tenured faculty member at George Mason effective this August. In 1997, he served as tax policy advisor to Senator Edward Kennedy. Terry’s most recent paper, Taxing Utility (forthcoming, Journal of Socioeconomics), argues that even lump-sum taxes can result in deadweight loss. His earlier publications include:
- Perception and Income: The Behavioral Economics of the Realization Doctrine (Connecticut Law Review), in which argues that the realization doctrine might actually track improvements to welfare better than mark-to-market taxation for many taxpayers
- Apologia for the Double Taxation of Corporate Income (Wake Forest Law Review), which presented a novel argument that the double taxation of corporate income may actually be welfare improving rather than inefficient. This article was selected for the Stanford-Yale Junior Faculty Forum.
- The Case for Repealing the Corporate Alternative Minimum Tax (SMU Law Journal, 2003) (with Michael Knoll)
Terry is one of the few academics working in the emerging field of neuroeconomics. He is the Assistant Director of the Center of Neuroeconomics at George Mason. He has written a number of articles with Kevin McCabe and Nobel Laureate Vernon Smith including:
- Lessons from Neuroeconomics for the Law (in The Law and Economics of Irrationality)
- Law and Neuroeconomics (Supreme Court Economic Review)
Terry and Kevin recently published The Brain and the Law (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London), on the application of neuroscience to the law. He is also an occasional contributor to the Neuroeconomics Blog.
Terry came to neuroeconomics as a result of his view that methods of valuation are crucial for understanding the implications of tax rules. He wanted to investigate more precise models of how individuals actually value receipts of property and services. This led him to be interested in understanding the neural mechanisms which are used in valuation. Consequently, a focus of his neuroeconomic work has been on the neural circuitry of reward. Terry is using some of the techniques that he has learned from this research in an experiment that he is conducting on the empirical validity of the Domar-Musgrave analysis. He has piloted this experiment, and is planning to run a larger version of the experiment in the coming months.
Each Saturday, TaxProf Blog shines the spotlight on one of the 700+ tax professors in America’s law schools. We hope to help bring the many individual stories of scholarly achievements, teaching innovations, public service, and career moves within the tax professorate to the attention of the broader tax community. Please email me suggestions for future Tax Prof Profiles. For prior Tax Prof Profiles, see here.
