Edward McCaffery

Robert C. Packard Trustee Chair in Law and Professor of Law, Economics and Political Science

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emccaffery@law.usc.edu
Room: On Leave
Personal Website: http://edmccaffery.com/

Academic Paper Websites:

• SSRN Electronic Library Page
• BEPress Website

Edward J. McCaffery joined the USC law faculty in 1989. An internationally recognized expert in tax law, Professor McCaffery studies tax policy, tax structures, public finance theory including behavioral public finance, as well as property law and theory, intellectual property, and law and economics. He teaches Federal Income Taxation, Property, Intellectual Property, and Tax Law and Policy at USC, and Law and Economics and Law and Technology at the California Institute of Technology.

Professor McCaffery’s scholarship has been widely cited by economists, government officials, journalists and policy analysts. Among his publications are his recent books, Behavioral Public Finance (which he co-edited); Fair Not Flat: How to Make the Tax System Better and Simpler, which proposes a tax system based on taxing spending rather than income; and Taxing Women, which examines how working women suffer under current tax laws. McCaffery has two books forthcoming: A New Ownership Society and Fiscal Confusion: How Citizens Misunderstand Tax and Spending Programs, and Why it Matters (with Jon Baron).

A summa cum laude graduate of Yale University, Professor McCaffery received his J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School and his master’s degree in economics from USC. He served as a clerk to Chief Justice Robert N. Wilentz of the New Jersey Supreme Court and was an attorney with Titchell, Maltzman, Mark, Bass, Ohleyer & Mishel before joining the USC Law faculty in 1989. He held the Maurice Jones, Jr., Professorship in Law from 1998 until 2004, when he was named the Robert C. Packard Trustee Chair in Law. He served as dean and Carl Mason Franklin Chair in Law on an interim basis from July 2006 to August 2007.

McCaffery also has served as a visiting professor of law and economics at the California Institute of Technology since 1994. He has chaired the USC Institute on Federal Taxation since 1997, and he founded the USC-Caltech Center for the Study of Law and Politics and served as its director from 2000 to 2003. He is an elected fellow of the American Law Institute (ALI) and the American College of Tax Counsel. Professor McCaffery also is of counsel to the Los Angeles office of Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP.

Works in Progress

• "Explorations in the Theory of Optimal Consumption taxes," with James R. Hines, Jr., work in progress.

Books

• Fiscal Confusion: How Citizens Misunderstand Tax and Spending Programs, and Why it Matters, with Jon Baron (in progress).
• A New Ownership Society (University of Chicago Press, forthcoming).
• Behavioral Public Finance, co-editor, with Joel Slemrod (Russell Sage Press, 2006).
• Rethinking the Vote: The Politics and Prospects of American Election Reform (edited with Ann N. Crigler and Marion R. Just) (Oxford University Press, 2004).
• Fair Not Flat: How to Make the Tax System Better and Simpler (University of Chicago Press, 2002).
• Taxing Women (1997) (Paperback edition with new preface, University of Chicago Press, 1999).

Articles and Book Chapters

• "Where's the Sex in Fiscal Sociology? Taxation and Gender in Comparative Perspective," in Isaac Martin, Ajay K. Mehrota, and Monica Prasad, editors, Taxation in Perspective; Comparative and Historical Approaches to Fiscal Sociology, under submission. - (SSRN)
• "Commentary on David Weisbach: Consumption Tax Implementation Methods," in Essays in Honor of David Bradford (Alan Auerbach and Daniel Shaviro, eds.) (forthcoming MIT Press). - (SSRN)
• "Starving the Beast: The Psychology of Budget Deficits," with Jon Baron, in Fiscal Challenges: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Budget Policy (Elizabeth Garrett, Elizabeth Graddy and Howell Jackson, eds.) (MIT Press, 2009). - (SSRN)
• "Sex Differences in the Acceptability of Discrimination" (with Timur Kuran) Political Research Quarterly (2008). - (SSRN)
• "Behavioral Economics and Fundamental Tax Reform," in Fundamental Tax Reform: Issue, Choices, and Implications (John W. Diamond and George R. Zodrow, eds.) (MIT Press, 2008). - (SSRN)
• "The Uneasy Case for Capital Taxation," in Taxation, Economic Prosperity, and Distributive Justice (Ellen Frankel Paul, Fred D. Miller, Jr., and Jeffrey Paul, eds.) (Cambridge University Press, 2006). - (SSRN)
• "Toward an Agenda for Behavioral Public Finance," with Joel Slemrod, in Behavioral Public Finance (McCaffery and Slemrod, eds.) (Russell Sage Press, 2006). - (SSRN)
• "Isolation Effects in Action: Uncovering Hidden Taxes" (with Jon Baron). 19 Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 1-14 (2006).
• "Isolation Effects in Action: Uncovering Hidden Taxes" (with Jon Baron). 19 Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 1-14 (2006).
• "The Uneasy Case for Capital Taxation." 23 Social Philosophy and Policy 166-14 (Summer 2006). - (SSRN)
• "Shakedown at Gucci Gulch: The New Logic of Collective Action" (with Linda Cohen). 84 North Carolina Law Review 1159-1252 (2006). - (Hein)
• "Thinking about Tax" (with Jon Baron). 12 Psychology, Public Policy & Law 106 (2006). - (SSRN)
• "Masking Redistribution (and its Absence)," with Jon Baron, in Behavioral Public Finance (McCaffery and Joel Slemrod, eds.) (Russell Sage Press, 2006). - (SSRN)
• "Three Views of Tax." 18 Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence 153 (2005) (Special issue on tax, Edward J. McCaffery, guest editor). - (Hein)
• "The Political Psychology of Redistirbution" (with Jon Baron). 52 UCLA Law Review 1745-1792 (2005). - (Hein)

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