Damián Vergara, Assistant Professor
Department of Economics, University of Michigan
Education:
Ph.D. in Economics, UC Berkeley
B.A. and M.A. in Economics, Universidad de Chile
Affiliations and Previous Appointments:
Faculty Research Fellow, NBER (Public Economics) (2025-)
Research Affiliate, IZA Institute of Labor Economics (2023-)
Postdoctoral Research Associate, IR Section, Princeton University (2023-2024)
Research: Optimal Policy
Working Papers
A Sufficient Statistics Approach to Optimal Corporate Taxes (with D. Swonder). November 2025. R&R, Journal of Political Economy.
Minimum Wages and Optimal Redistribution: The Role of Firm Profits. January 2026.
Optimal Tax Information with Privacy Concerns (with J. Slemrod). February 2026. Accepted, International Tax and Public Finance.
Publications
Place-Based Redistribution (with C. Gaubert, P. Kline, and D. Yagan). 2025, American Economic Review 115 (10): pp. 3415–3450.
Selected Work in Progress
Equality of Opportunity vs Equality of Outcomes: A Theory of Optimal Predistribution (with R. Chetty, H. Kleven, and D. Yagan)
Research: Labor Markets and Labor Market Institutions
Working Papers
Minimum Wages and the Distribution of Firm Wage Premia (with M. Bergolo, R. Ceni, and M. Fondo). February 2026.
Directed Search, Pay, and Non-Wage Amenities: Evidence from an Online Job Board (with V. Escudero and H. Liepmann). September 2025.
Publications
Workplace Litigiousness and Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from a Workers' Compensation Reform (with M. Lauletta). 2025, Journal of Law and Economics 69(4): pp. 933-956.
Selected Work in Progress
An Anatomy of Wage Spillovers: Evidence from an Occupation-Industry-Specific Wage Floor (with J. Feinmann and R. Hsu Rocha)
Research: Inequality and Tax Policy
Publications
A Simple Model of Corporate Tax Incidence (appendix) (replication package) (with D. Swonder). 2024. AEA Papers and Proceedings 114: 352-357.
Do Policies and Institutions Matter for Pre-Tax Income Inequality? Cross-Country Evidence (appendix) (replication package). 2022. International Tax and Public Finance 29 (1): pp. 20-52.
Trends in US Spatial Inequality: Concentrating Affluence and a Democratization of Poverty (appendix) (replication package) (with C. Gaubert, P. Kline, and D. Yagan). 2021. AEA Papers and Proceedings 111: pp 520-525.
Using Small Businesses for Individual Tax Planning: Evidence from Special Tax Regimes in Chile (with C. Agostini, E. Engel, and A. Repetto). 2018. International Tax and Public Finance 25 (6): pp 1449-1489.
Research: Discrimination
Working Papers
An Observational Implementation of the Outcome Test with an Application to Ethnic Prejudice in Pretrial Detentions (with N. Grau). July 2025. R&R, Journal of the European Economic Association.
Discrimination Against Immigrants in the Criminal Justice System: Evidence from Pretrial Detentions (with P. Domínguez and N. Grau). August 2023.
Publications
Combining Discrimination Diagnostics to Identify Sources of Statistical Discrimination (appendix) (with P. Domínguez and N. Grau). 2022. Economics Letters 212, 110294.
Policy Papers, Book Chapters, and Pre-Doctoral Research
Policy Papers
Diagnóstico Distributivo de Ingreso y Patrimonio, y Análisis de la Propuesta de Reforma Tributaria en Materia de Renta y Riqueza (with N. Bohme, I. Flores, P. Gutiérrez, R. Smith, and P. Valenzuela). 2022. Documento de Trabajo Ministerio de Hacienda de Chile (in Spanish).
Análisis de Implementación de las Nuevas Reglas de Financiamiento a la Política y Campañas Electorales (with E. Engel, M. Jaraquemada, and N. Campos). 2018. Informe de Políticas Públicas, Espacio Público (in Spanish).
Principios para una Reforma al Sistema de Pensiones (with E. Engel, E. Fajnzylber, P. Fernández, S. Gray, and A. Repetto). 2017. Informe de Políticas Públicas, Espacio Público (in Spanish).
Sistema de Pensiones: Opiniones y Demandas Ciudadanas. 2017. Documento de Referencia, Espacio Público (in Spanish).
Book Chapters
Cómo diseñar impuestos: Teoría económica y evidencia empírica. 2021. In Impuestos justos para el Chile que viene: Diagnóstico y desafíos tributarios para un nuevo pacto fiscal, edited by J. Atria and C. Otero (book website), Fondo de Cultura Económica (in Spanish).
Pre-Doctoral Research
Natural Resources and Educational Attainment: Evidence from Chile (with R. Álvarez). 2022. Resources Policy 76, 102573.
Ambiguity and Long-Run Cooperation in Strategic Games (appendix) (code) (with M. Rojas). 2021. Oxford Economic Papers 73 (3): pp 1077-1098.