Andrew Hayashi (Virginia, SSRN), presents Inequality among whom?: Tax Federalism and the Choice of Distributional Units at San Diego today as part of its Tax Law Speaker Series.

Monday, March 30, 2026 | noon – 1:00 p.m. PST
Warren Hall 2A, University of San Diego
students welcome / lunch provided / registration not required

Income inequality is a national preoccupation, and the astronomical incomes of Silicon Valley tech billionaires and Greenwich fund managers capture the public’s imagination. But most people do not live in high-wealth enclaves in California and Connecticut, and many of the adverse effects of income inequality are local. Our preoccupation with national inequality can be pernicious because laws that reduce national income inequality can paradoxically increase local income inequality. Using income tax return data, I show how recent proposals for student loan forgiveness and interest payment pauses have precisely this surprising effect.

Understanding the contexts in which income inequalities matter most requires a general account of how incomes translate into the goods that affect individual status, well-being, and opportunity. I argue that this translation of income into power and consumption can be understood as occurring through an architecture of “allocative fields,” which includes commodity markets and political entities such as states and counties. I also propose a new composite measure of income inequality that accounts for the local contexts where it matters most. Viewing income inequality through this lens allows us to see new ways of addressing the adverse effects of income inequality, including accounting for the distributional effects of federal laws at subnational levels, adopting a national priority for the poorest, and renovating the federal architecture of income inequality itself.