"the team was given the chance to work directly with tax records."
Doesn't quite agree with a later paragraph about sending dummy-tested queries to the IRS. The top men went through a security check, but did all of them?
I don't think Guest007 read past that paragraph. It later says Chetty and Saez got to work directly on the IRS database as if they were IRS. I'm going to guess again that this is not the transacational database but a data warehouse set up for the project for which the IRS put out the RFP
My reading is that the normal procedure is queries against dummy data sent in by outside researchers but that Chetty got special status to just go in and query the database like an IRS employee.
That story strongly implies that they are NOT previewing their code with IRS employees and that they have direct access to individual returns.
"the team was given the chance to work directly with tax records."
Doesn't quite agree with a later paragraph about sending dummy-tested queries to the IRS. The top men went through a security check, but did all of them?
I don't think Guest007 read past that paragraph. It later says Chetty and Saez got to work directly on the IRS database as if they were IRS. I'm going to guess again that this is not the transacational database but a data warehouse set up for the project for which the IRS put out the RFP
Do you really think that the IRS would set up a second copy of the entire tax return database just for a few researchers?
As far as I can tell the story implies that they let the researchers query production data.
My reading is that the normal procedure is queries against dummy data sent in by outside researchers but that Chetty got special status to just go in and query the database like an IRS employee.