New Releases by Philipp Meyer

This paper derives a government''s optimal tax audit policy when taxpayers hold different beliefs about the likelihood of a tax audit. When audits are inexpensive, differences in perceived audit risk lead to stricter optimal auditing in equilibrium. If audits are relatively costly, heterogeneity in audit perceptions lowers the equilibrium audit intensity. Except when beliefs are near-identical throughout the population, both tax evasion and honest reporting occur in equilibrium. A welfare analysis shows a non-monotonic, U-shaped relationship between perception heterogeneity and social welfare. High levels of social welfare are associated with very homogeneous or very heterogeneous populations. Moderately heterogeneous taxpayer populations are associated with lower levels of social welfare.

This paper derives the optimal financial contract when an entrepreneur can evade taxes in a model of costly state verification. In contrast to previous literature on costly state verification and financial contracting, we find that standard debt contracts are not optimal when tax evasion is possible. Instead, the optimal contract is debt-like only for very low and very high profit realizations, and features a constant repayment and verification of returns in an intermediate range. This occurs because the entrepreneur has to be given a positive rent even under verification in order to not abuse her limited liability protection for excessive tax evasion activities.

This paper analyzes corporate tax evasion in a principal-agent model with multitasking. A firm-owner hires a specialist tax manager who chooses the quantity as well as the quality of tax evasion. Higher quality is a form of self-insurance and lowers the firm''s expected fine for tax evasion. In contrast to earlier literature, we find that asymmetric information inside firms may enhance the efficacy of tax enforcement. This occurs because highly sophisticated tax evasion activities are often difficult to understand and assess for the non-specialist shareholder, who commissions fewer such activities as a result of this informational disadvantage.

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NOW A MAJOR TV SERIES starring Pierce Brosnan and co-written by Philipp Meyer The critically acclaimed, New York Times-bestselling epic, a saga of land, blood and power, follows the rise of one unforgettable Texas family from the Comanche raids of the 1800s to the oil booms of the 20th century. Eli McCullough is just twelve years old when a marauding band of Comanche storm his Texas homestead, brutally murder his mother and sister and take him captive. Despite their torture and cruelty, Eli - against all odds - adapts to life with the Comanche, learning their ways and language, taking on a new name, finding a place as the adopted son of the band''s chief and fighting their wars against not only other Indians but white men too, which complicates his sense of loyalty, his promised vengeance and his very understanding of self. But when disease, starvation and westward expansion finally decimate the Comanche, Eli is left alone in a world in which he belongs nowhere, neither white nor Indian, civilized nor fully wild. Deftly interweaving Eli’s story with those of his son Peter and his great-granddaughter JA, The Son maps the legacy of Eli’s ruthlessness, his drive to power and his lifelong status as an outsider, even as the McCullough family rises to become one of the richest in Texas, a ranching and oil dynasty that is as resilient and dangerous as the land they claim. Yet, like all empires, the McCulloughs must eventually face the consequences of their choices. Panoramic, deeply evocative and utterly transporting, The Son is a masterpiece American novel - part epic of Texas, part classic coming-of-age story - that combines the narrative prowess of Larry McMurtry with the knife-edge sharpness of Cormac McCarthy. ''Stunning ... a book that for once really does deserve to be called a masterpiece'' Kate Atkinson ''Magnificent ... McCarthy''s Border Trilogy is a point of reference, as is There Will Be Blood, but it is not fanciful to be reminded of certain passages from Moby-Dick - it''s that good''The Times ''Brilliant ... a wonderful novel'' Lionel Shriver

Photographer and filmmaker Nic Nicosia makes pictures. Since the late 1970s, Nicosia has staged and constructed sets, objects, and situations to be photographed rather than to reproduce something that already exists. These conceptual fabrications have ranged from elaborate sets with live actors to dioramas and abstract constructions. Whether his pictures contain a disturbing suburban narrative, or are fabricated by the act of drawing, or are simply created by the use of common objects with dramatic lighting, the familiar thread of Nicosia''s unique vision and sensibility is always present. Nic Nicosia is the first major publication of the artist''s work and covers his entire oeuvre through 2011. The catalog presents images from all of Nicosia''s major photographic series, including Domestic Dramas, Near (modern) Disasters, The Cast, Life as We Know It, Real Pictures, Love + Lust, Acts, Sex Acts, Untitled Landscapes, 365 SaFe Days, Untitled (drawing), Space Time Light, I See Light, and in the absence of others, as well as stills from the videos Middletown, Moving Picture, Middletown Morning, Cerchi E Quadratti, On Acting America, and 9 1/2 Hours to SaFe. Accompanying the catalog is an overview of Nicosia''s career by Michelle White, an interview with the artist by Sue Graze, and an original short story by Philipp Meyer that powerfully resonates with the sense of wonder and menace in Nicosia''s art.

This paper studies inherited agglomeration effects, how human capital that accrues to managers while working at a parent firm in an industry hub can be subsequently transferred to a spinoff. We test for inherited agglomeration effects in the context of the hedge fund industry and find that hedge fund managers who previously worked in New York and London outperform their peers who worked elsewhere previously by 10-14 basis points per month or about 1.5% per year. The results are driven by managers who worked in investment management positions previously, and are at least as large as traditional agglomeration effects that arise from being located in an industry hub contemporaneously. The evidence suggests that inherited agglomeration effects are an important, but as yet overlooked, factor influencing the performance of new firms.

In this paper, we develop and test a framework to better understand how firms strategically deploy their individual-level resources to opportunities. We analyze the allocation of individual-level resources (lawyers) to projects (M&A mandates) in the UK corporate M&A legal market. We find evidence that firms adapt their allocation decisions to deal with the constraints on resource deployment associated with resource scarcity and congestion. Specifically, firms appear to adopt five strategies to manage their constrained resources: Load Equalization, Selective Stretching, Assortative Matching, Relationship Building, and Relational Capital Substitution. We also find suggestive evidence of firm level heterogeneity in the firm''s ability to appropriately deploy resources. Overall, this paper refines the understanding of the resource deployment process and of individuals as rent-generating assets.

NOW A HIT STREAMING SERIES • A “bold, absorbing novel” (The New York Times Book Review) of the lost American dream, the acts of friendship, loyalty, and love that arise from its loss, and two young men, bound to their hometown, who crave an escape. “Powerful . . . gripping . . . in the tradition that stretches from Ernest Hemingway to Cormac McCarthy.”—The Washington Post A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Economist, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Newsweek, Kansas City Star, Idaho Statesman Left alone to care for his aging father after his mother dies by suicide and his sister escapes to Yale, Isaac English longs for a life beyond his hometown, a beautiful but economically devastated Pennsylvania steel town. But when he finally sets out to leave for good, accompanied by his temperamental best friend, former high school football star Billy Poe, they are caught up in a terrible act of violence that changes their lives forever. Evoking John Steinbeck’s novels of restless lives during the Great Depression, American Rust takes us into the contemporary American heartland at a moment of profound unrest and uncertainty about the future. It is a dark but lucid vision, a moving novel about the bleak realities that battle our desire for transcendence and the power of love and friendship to redeem us.