housing market responses to transaction taxes evidence from notches and stimulus in the uk we investigate housing market responses to transaction taxes using administrative data on all property transactions in the u k from 2004 to 2012 combined with quasi experimental variation from tax notches and tax stimulus we present two main findings first transaction taxes are highly distortionary across a range of margins causing large distortions to the price volume and timing of property transactions secondly temporary transaction tax cuts are an enormously effective form of fiscal stimulus a temporary elimination of a 1 transaction tax increased housing market activity by 20 in the short run due to both timing and extensive responses and less than half of the stimulus effect was reversed after the tax was reintroduced due to re timing because of the complementarities between moving house and consumer spending these stimulus effects translate into extra spending per dollar of tax cut equal to about 1 we interpret our empirical findings in the context of a housing model with downpayment constraints in which leverage amplifies the effects of transaction taxes

global warming technological change and trade in carbon energy challenge or threat is it possible to combat global climate change through north to south technology transfer even without a global climate treaty or do carbon leakage and the rebound effect imply that it is possible to take advantage of technological improvements under the umbrella of a global arrangement only for answering these questions two possible states of the world are discussed one where more energy efficient technologies are transferred unconditionally from the north to the south and where regions do not cooperate in the solution of the global climate problem but unilaterally decide on climate policies and technology transfers one where the north to south technology transfer is tied to the requirement that the south in some way contributes to the solution of the global climate problem rebound and leakage effects hinder a sustainable and welfare improving solution of the climate problem

fixed costs and long lived investments abstract fixed costs models are difficult to analyze because they feature non degenerate time varying distributions of capital across firms if investments are sufficiently long lived however then the cross sectional distribution of capital holdings has virtually no bearing on the equilibrium and the aggregate behavior of fixed cost models is essentially identical to neoclassical models the findings are due to a near infinite elasticity of investment timing for long lived investments a feature shared by fixed cost models and neoclassical models irrelevance results found in numerical studies of fixed cost models are not parametric special cases but instead are fundamental properties of models with long lived investment goods

joint confidence intervals for income shares and lorenz curves in a recent paper beach and davidson 1983 extended the principles of statistical inference to lorenz curves and income shares by establishing the asymptotic distribution and covariance structure of a vector of lorenz curve ordinates corresponding to a set of quantile abscissae one can thus use the lorenz curve and income shares no longer just as descriptive devices for summarizing distribution information but now also as analytical tools for comparing alternative distributions and carrying out conventional statistical inference on them it would clearly be desirable however to extend and complement this work by providing a method for computing a set of joint confidence intervals about these income shares and for illustrating graphically a joint confidence band about a set of estimated lorenz curve ordinates the present paper provides a new and simple technique for doing this when analyzing differences between sets of income shares or lorenz curves one typically wants to elicit more detailed information than is provided by a standard joint chi square test on the overall set of shares that is when the hypothesis of two sets of shares being the same is rejected we generally want to know further which particular differences in shares are different from zero and of these nonzero differences which are positive and which negative savin 1980 a natural way of providing such information is through multiple comparison procedures developed in this paper in a recent work richmond 1982 has developed a general method of finding multiple comparison intervals that is particularly suited to the present problem and in this situation appears to dominate other conventional alternatives in contrast for example to scheff s s projection method richmond s approach focuses on a set of primary points of interest income shares among a more general set of points including the lorenz curve ordinates and optimizes the joint confidence interval lengths on this primary set of points since estimated lorenz curve ordinates are built up from underlying income shares these shares perhaps further supplemented are natural choices for the primary set the method however also provides a joint confidence band that geometrically bounds the set of lorenz curve ordinates and interpolated segments between them the present

the incidence and allocation effects of a tax on corporate distributions abstract to study the effects of double taxation first at the corporation level then at the shareholder level this paper analyzes a model with a tax on all corporate distributions to equity owners and no other taxes contrary to the common view the tax is shown to have no subtitution effect and in particular no effect on the corporate choice between debt and equity via retained earnings finance the analysis opens to question certain arguments commonly used to support integration of corporation and individual income taxes via dividend relief

a tale of two collectives sulphur versus nitrogen oxides emission reduction in europe a theoretical model of emission reductions is specified that accounts for voluntary and non voluntary behaviour regarding the adherence to the helsinki and sofia protocols which mandated emission reductions for sulphur s and nitrogen oxides nox respectively from this model we derive an econometric specification for the demand for emission reductions that adjusts for the spatial dispersion of the pollutant when tested for 25 european nations the model performs well for sulphur cutbacks less satisfying results are obtained for nox because the model s assumption of a unitary actor at the national level is less descriptive collective action considerations indicate that sulphur emissions are easier to control than those of nox

capital tax reform and the real economy the effects of the 2003 dividend tax cut this paper tests whether the 2003 dividend tax cut one of the largest reforms ever to a us capital tax rate stimulated corporate investment and increased labor earnings using a quasi experimental design and us corporate tax returns from years 1996 2008 i estimate that the tax cut caused zero change in corporate investment and employee compensation economically the statistical precision challenges leading estimates of the cost of capital elasticity of investment or undermines models in which dividend tax reforms affect the cost of capital either way it may be difficult to implement an alternative dividend tax cut that has substantially larger near term effects jel c72 c78 c91

testing for poverty dominance an application to canada the paper proposes and applies statistical tests for poverty dominance that check for whether poverty comparisons can be made robustly over ranges of poverty lines and classes of poverty indices this helps provide both normative and statistical confidence in establishing poverty rankings across distributions the tests which can take into account the complex sampling procedures that are typically used by statistical agencies to generate household level surveys are implemented using the canadian survey of labour and income dynamics slid for 1996 1999 and 2002 although the yearly cumulative distribution functions cross at the lower tails of the distributions the more recent years tend to dominate earlier years for a relatively wide range of poverty lines failing to take into account slid s sampling variability as is sometimes done can inflate significantly one s confidence in ranking poverty taking into account slid s complex sampling design as has not been done before can also decrease substantially the range of poverty lines over which a poverty ranking can be inferred

tax policy and heterogeneous investment behavior abstract we estimate the effect of temporary tax incentives on equipment investment using shifts in accelerated depreciation analyzing data for over 120 000 firms we present three findings first

how responsive is business capital formation to its user cost an exploration with micro data abstract the response of business capital formation to its user cost is critical to evaluating tax reform deficit reduction and monetary policy evidence for a substantial user cost elasticity however is sparse most evidence has been based on aggregate data although several recent studies with firm level data report substantial effects with a particularly rich micro dataset containing over 26 000 observations this paper explores what can be learned about the user cost elasticity while the results depend to some extent on the specification and econometric technique various diagnostics lead us to prefer a precisely estimated but small elasticity of approximately 0 25 this paper is dedicated to the memory of robert eisner who labored early and ably on uncovering the determinants of investment spending and highlighting the importance of the question found in the title of this paper

tax adjusted q model with intangible assets theory and evidence from temporary investment tax incentives we propose a tax adjusted q model with physical and intangible assets and estimate the effect of bonus depreciation in the united states in the early 2000s we find that investment responds moderately to tax incentives but allowing for heterogeneity reveals that intangible intensive firms respond more than physical intensive firms and that this difference is accentuated among large firms accounting for intangible assets increases the estimated total investment response from 3 7 to 14 3 of aggregate investment in 2000 among the largest 500 firms our results suggest that understanding the behavior of large and intangible intensive firms matters for investment policy

investment ramifications of distortionary tax subsidies abstract this paper examines the investment effects of tax subsidies for which some assets and not others are eligible distortionary tax subsidies concentrate investments in tax favored assets thereby reducing the expected pre tax profitability of investment and reducing payoffs to bondholders in the event of default anticipation of asset substitution encourages lenders to require covenants in debt contracts which only imperfectly address asset substitution and distort investment the result is that borrowing is made more expensive which in turn discourages investment borrowing rates can react so strongly that aggregate investment may rise very little or even fall in response to higher tax subsidies debt issued by u s firms in risk of default after the 2002 introduction of bonus depreciation for u s equipment investment contained many more covenants than in other periods a pattern that reversed when bonus depreciation was discontinued after 2004 furthermore firms at risk of default borrowed less and were more apt to lease capital than were other firms during the bonus depreciation period

the welfare effects of temporary tax cuts and subsidies theory estimation and applications this article presents a tractable and intuitive theory on the welfare effects of temporary tax cuts and subsidies fiscal policies that i generically term holidays the kaldor hicks efficiency effects are theoretically ambiguous with competing pro and anti efficiency effects on newly incentivized versus time shifted purchases to rectify this ambiguity i derive expressions for the welfare effects that are consistent with constant elasticity assumptions and depend only upon readily and reliably observed information to demonstrate the framework s broad applicability i analyze two different policies the 2009 cash for clunkers program and states sales tax holidays i estimate that both policies generated substantial deadweight loss jel h21 h30 d91

government consumption and investment does the composition of purchases affect the multiplier abstract a large and conventional class of macroeconomic models predicts that short lived government investment shocks have a smaller fiscal multiplier than government consumption shocks i test this prediction in a panel of oecd countries using real time forecasts of government consumption and investment to purify changes in purchases of their predicted components consistent with theory the estimated government investment multiplier is near zero and the government consumption multiplier approximately 0 8 these findings suggest that fiscal stimulus packages which contain large government investment components may not be as effective at stimulating aggregate demand as commonly thought

strategic transfers and private provision of public goods abstract this paper considers strategic monetary transfers between two agents when these contribute to a mutual public good if the agents differ in their contribution productivity then the less productive agent has an incentive to make large unconditional transfers to the more productive agent although agents move simultaneously in each stage of the game the less productive agent becomes a stackelberg leader furthermore the generic subgame perfect equilibrium is characterized by full specialization

consistent testing for stochastic dominance under general sampling schemes we propose a procedure for estimating the critical values of the extended kolmogorov smirnov tests of stochastic dominance of arbitrary order in the general k prospect case we allow for the observations to be serially dependent and for the first time we can accommodate general dependence amongst the prospects which are to be ranked also the prospects may be the residuals from certain conditional models opening the way for conditional ranking we also propose a test of prospect stochastic dominance our method is based on subsampling and we show that the resulting tests are consistent and powerful against some n 1 2 local alternatives we also propose some heuristic methods for selecting subsample size and demonstrate in simulations that they perform reasonably we describe an alternative method for obtaining critical values based on recentring the test statistic and using full sample bootstrap methods we compare the two methods in theory and in practice

on measuring the effects of fiscal policy in recessions we do not have a good measure of the effects of fiscal policy in a recession because the methods that we use to estimate the effects of fiscal policy both those using the observed outcomes following different policies in aggregate data and those studying counterfactuals in fitted model economies almost entirely ignore the state of the economy and estimate the government multiplier which is presumably a weighted average of the one we care about the multiplier in a recession and one we care less about the multiplier in an expansion notable exceptions to this general claim sug gest this difference is potentially large our lack of knowledge stems significantly from the focus on linear dynamics vector autoregressions and linearized or close to linear dynamic stochastic general equilibrium dsge models our lack of knowledge also reflects a lack of data deep recessions are few and nonlinearities hard to measure the lack of statistical power in the estimation of nonlinear models using aggregate data can be addressed by exploiting estimates of partial equilibrium responses in disaggregated data microeconomic estimates of the partial equilibrium causal effects of a policy can discipline the causal channels inherent in any dsge model of the general equilibrium effects of policy microeconomic studies can also provide measures of the dependence of the effects of a policy on the states of different agents which is a key component of the dependence of the general equilibrium effects of fiscal policy on the state of the

discretionary fiscal responses to the covid 19 pandemic we analyse discretionary fiscal responses to the covid 19 pandemic we distinguish policies for three phases of the pandemic 1 acute overall disruption 2 initial recovery phase and 3 the longer term we analyse measures already taken in 1 and consider measures relevant for 2 we distinguish between lump sum subsidies such as deferral of tax payments which may ease financial constraints and measures which intentionally affect incentives we also identify factors that are important given the short term nature of the measures

the state dependent effects of tax shocks abstract this paper studies the state dependent effects of shocks to tax rates we begin with a stylized model in which clean analytical expressions are available the model predicts that a tax rate cut is most stimulative for output in periods in which output is relatively high the model is also used to discuss some conceptual issues related to the construction of tax multipliers we then consider a medium scale dsge model with tax rates on labor and capital income and on consumption the model is solved via a third order perturbation consonant with the intuition from the analytical model tax multipliers for all three types of tax rates vary significantly across states and are most stimulative for output in states in which output is high to evaluate the normative desirability of tax cuts as a tool to combat recessions we also study the properties of the tax cut welfare multiplier which measures the change in aggregate welfare conditional on a tax rate change in contrast to output multipliers welfare multipliers are found to be countercyclical a number of extensions and modifications are considered and our conclusions are generally robust

identifying the free riders a simple algorithm for determining who will contribute to a public good abstract when a heterogeneous group of people provide themselves with a pure public good the resulting nash equilibrium outcome will divide the group into contributors and free riders this paper proposes a general algorithm for discovering which individuals in the group fall into which of these two classes the algorithm is based on identifying for each individual how much of the public good must be provided by others to drive that individual s contribution to zero

the small sample bias of the gini coefficient results and implications for empirical research the gini coefficient is a downward biased measure of inequality in small populations when income is generated by one of three common distributions the paper discusses the sources of bias and argues that this property is far more general this has implications for i the comparison of inequality among subsamples some of which may be small and ii the use of the gini in measuring firm size inequality in markets with a small number of firms the small sample bias has often led to misperceptions about trends in industry concentration a small sample adjustment results in a reduced bias which can no longer be signed this remaining bias rises with the dispersion and falls with increasing skewness of the distribution finally an empirical example illustrates the importance of using the adjusted gini in this example it is shown that controlling for market characteristics larger shipping cartels include a set of firms that is stochastically identical in terms of relative size to those of smaller shipp

which is a better investment choice in the hong kong residential property market a big or small property the relationship between property size and property investment yield is an interesting issue in the real estate market previous studies usually use the mean variance criterion to compare the return risk profiles of the yields of different property sizes in the united states however this criterion has a few shortcomings this article provides the first attempt to use a stochastic dominance approach to analyse this issue we adopt two powerful stochastic dominance tests to compare the yields of five property size classes in the hong kong residential property market in our study we analyse two possible investment outcomes 1 investors could not rent out their properties and thus they would gain lose from the appreciation depreciation of residential property prices 2 investors could also gain from rental incomes our empirical results provide strong evidence to show that the yields of smaller property classes stochastically dominate the yields of bigger property classes suggesting that buying smal

activist fiscal policy during and after the great recession that began in december 2007 the u s federal government enacted several rounds of activist fiscal policy in this paper we review the recent evolution of thinking and evidence regarding the effectiveness of activist fiscal policy although fiscal interventions aimed at stimulating and stabilizing the economy have returned to common use their efficacy remains controversial we review the debate about the traditional types of fiscal policy interventions such as broad based tax cuts and spending increases as well as more targeted policies while there have been improvements in estimates of the effects of broad based policies much of what has been learned recently concerns how such multipliers might vary with respect to economic conditions such as the credit market disruptions and very low interest rates that were central features of the great recession the eclectic and innovative interventions by the federal reserve and other central banks during this period highlight the imprecise divisions between monetary and fiscal policy and the many channels through which fiscal policies can be implemented

investment tax incentives prices and the supply of capital goods using data on the prices of capital goods this paper shows that much of the benefit of investment tax incentives does not go to investing firms but rather to capital suppliers through higher prices the reduction in the cost of capital from a 10 percent investment tax credit increases equipment prices 3 5 7 0 percent this lasts several years and is largest for assets with large order backlogs low import competition or with a large fraction of buyers able to use investment subsidies capital goods workers wages rise too instrumental variables estimates of the short run supply elasticity are around 1 and can explain the traditionally small estimates of investment demand elasticities in absolute value the demand elasticity implied here exceeds 1

have air pollutant emissions converged among u s regions evidence from unit root tests previous studies of income distribution have found evidence indicating that incomes across u s regions have converged supporting the prediction of the neoclassical growth model a potential shortcoming in these studies is that only one measure of well being is considered a measure of wealth linked to incomes or production this paper examines whether income convergence was accompanied by air pollutant emission convergence results from unit root tests provide some evidence that indicators of environmental quality have converged across u s regions during the 1929 1994 period

durable goods investment shocks and the comovement problem sticky price models suggest that capital investment shocks are an important driver of business cycle fluctuations despite quantitative importance in explaining business cycles a comovement problem emerges because the shocks generate intertemporal substitution effects away from consumption toward investment this paper resolves the problem by extending the standard sticky price model to a two sector model with consumer durable services when durable goods are used as investment in capital and consumer durables positive capital investment shocks also generate intratemporal substitution effects away from consumer durable services toward nondurable consumption that dominates intertemporal effects consequently consumption increases and the comovement problem is resolved

inflation tax rules and investment some econometric evidence this paper presents econometric evidence on the effect of tax incentives on business investment in the united states in the period from 1953 through1978 the analysis emphasizes that the interaction of inflation and existing tax rules has contributed substantially to the decline of business investment since the late 1960 s because the investment process is far too complex for any simple econometric model to be convincing i have estimated three quite different models of investment behavior the strength of the empirical evidence rests on the fact that all three specifications support the same conclusion more generally the analysis and evidence show that theoretical models of macroeconomic equilibrium should specify explicitly the role of distortionary taxes especially taxes on capital income the failure to include such tax rules can have dramatic and misleading effects on the qualitative as well as the quantitative properties of macroeconomic theories this paper was presented as the fisher shultz lecture at the fourth world congress of the econometric society 29 august 1980 in aix en province this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

stimulating housing markets we study temporary fiscal stimulus designed to support distressed housing markets by inducing demand from buyers in the private market using difference in differences and regression kink research designs we find that the first time homebuyer credit increased home sales by 490 000 9 8 median home prices by 2 400 1 1 per standard deviation increase in program exposure and the transition rate into homeownership by 53 the policy response did not reverse immediately instead demand comes from several years in the future induced buyers were three years younger in 2009 than typical first time buyers the program s market stabilizing benefits likely exceeded its direct stimulus effects

regional convergence and national inequality this paper explores the implications of regional income convergence for measures of inequality at the national level in general such convergence occurs as poorer regions overtake more developed ones it is difficult to imagine any realistic scenario in which rising incomes in poorer regions would not have the effect of reducing absolute poverty at the same time it seems reasonable to assume that national inequality would fall as the mean incomes in the various regions converge given these general presumptions the recent economic history of regional convergence between the southern united states and the rest of the nation is quite puzzling over the last twenty five years mean family income in the southern united states has gone from about 80 of the national mean to about 93 at the same time inequality in the south and that in the non south have been changing only slightly when measured by gini coefficients under these circumstances with no serious deterioration in intraregional measures of inequality we would expect to observe a substantial reduction in national inequality as these two broad regions converge in mean incomes nevertheless there has been no significant decline in the national gini coefficient this apparent paradox is in contrast to an earlier period in u s history in which regional convergence occurred while national inequality was falling smolensky 1961 1963 the purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the relationship between regional convergence and overall inequality is far from obvious in particular we shot that the convergence of mean incomes among regions ceteris paribus is not a sufficient condition for a reduction in common measures of ov erall inequality such as the gini coefficient the ceteris paribas conditions here are that the distribution of population across regions and the relative distribution of income within each region are held constant the proof of this assertion is made in section ii in section iii we demonstrate the relevance of this analysis to the u s case we show that the simple mean convergence of family incomes between the southern united states and the rest of the nation over the last twenty five years should not have been expected to have a direct effect on national inequality the naive link between regional income convergence and national income distribution does not hold up in this important case hence the arguments of section ii are more than analytical curiosa in a situation where the direct effects of income convergence are insufficient to reduce overall inequality there is the possibility that the broader process of regional convergence achieves this result more indirectly regional convergence may involve economic changes that work on intra regional income distributions or the distribution of population across regions in ways favorable to greater national equality in section iv we speculate on such indirect effects from a theoretical point of view we conclude that the direction and extent of such interactions are not obvious

are financing constraints binding for investment evidence from a natural experiment abstract this paper shows that the availability of cash flows dominates the effects of cost of capital for investment at the firm level using an exogenous tax reform in canada as a quasi natural experiment i find that a temporary and unexpected increase in the cost of capital for firms with low availability of retained earnings has no effect on investment of those firms a subsequent direct increase in the availability of cash flows has large effects on investment this suggests that internal financing constraints are binding for firms as they prefer to use low cost retained earnings to finance their investment

accounting for south non south real wage differentials and for changes in those differentials over time a unified accounting framework for analyzing differences in real wages between the south and non south in 1979 and for changes in south non south wage ratios between 1973 and 1979 is outlined cross section analysis of real wage differentials allows two sources of regional wage variation 1 worker and job characteristics and 2 returns to those characteristics our results suggest that differences in the latter may be as important in accounting for regional wage differentials as the former an interactive specification permits decomposition of changes in regional wage ratios into direct effects of changes in characteristics and indirect effects of region year and region year variations in returns more than half the predicted changes in south non south wage ratios can be accounted for by changing relative returns to characteristics between the south and non south

dynamic effects of permanent and temporary tax policies in a q model of investment abstract this paper incorporates the tax policy analysis of hall and jorgenson into a dynamic optimizing model with adjustment costs to develop a q model of investment this framework is particularly useful for analyzing the dynamic effects on investment of permanent and temporary changes in tax policy it is shown that contrary to the conventional intertemporal substitution argument a temporary investment tax credit need not be nore expansionary than a permanent investment tax credit the role of depreciation allowances in determining the dynamic response of investment to temporary changes in the tax rate is also investigated

could the global financial crisis improve the performance of the g7 stocks markets abstractfinancial crises are normally associated with negative effects on financial markets in this article we investigate whether the most recent global financial crisis gfc had any positive impact on the g7 canada france germany italy japan the united kingdom and the united states indices to conduct the analysis we employ the mean variance mv analysis capm statistics hurst exponent runs test multiple variation ratio test and stochastic dominance sd tests our mv and capm results conclude that most of the g7 stock indices are significantly less volatile the results from hurst exponent run tests and multiple variation ratio confirm that efficiency improved in the post gfc period finally our sd results conclude that there is no arbitrage opportunity and the markets are efficient due to the gfc and in general investors prefer investing in the indices after the gfc overall we conclude that the gfc led to markets that are more efficient and mature confirming that crises can also

investment incentives and corporate tax asymmetries abstract recent facts on the importance of corporate losses motivate more careful study of the impact of tax incentives for investment on firms that lose money i model firm investment decisions in a setting featuring financing constraints and carrybacks and carryforwards of operating losses i estimate investment responses to tax incentives allowing effects to vary with cash flows and taxable status results suggest that asymmetries in the corporate tax code could have made recent bonus depreciation tax incentives at most 4 less effective than they would have been if all firms were fully taxable cash flows have more important effects on the impact of tax incentives recent declines in cash flows would predict a 24 decrease in the effectiveness of bonus depreciation results thus suggest that tax incentives have the smallest impact on investment exactly when they are most likely to be put in place during downturns in economic activity when cash flows are low

measuring factor adjustment costs i estimate adjustment costs for labor and capital from the euler equations for factor demand for both factors i find relatively strong evidence against substantial adjustment costs my estimates use annual data from two digit industries my results support the view that rents arising from adjustment costs are relatively small and are not an important part of the explanation of the large movements of the values of corporations in relation to the reproduction costs of their capital i investigate the potential effects of three types of specification error 1 aggregation over time 2 aggregation over firms with heterogeneous demand shocks and 3 estimation of a convex adjustment cost technology in the presence of nonconvex discrete adjustment costs i find that the likely biases from these specification errors are relatively small

innis lecture inference on income distributions this paper attempts to provide a synthetic view of varied techniques available for performing inference on income distributions two main approaches can be distinguished one in which the object of interest is some index of income inequality or poverty the other based on notions of stochastic dominance from the statistical point of view many techniques are common to both approaches although of course some are specific to one of them i assume throughout that inference about population quantities is to be based on a sample or samples and formally all randomness is due to that of the sampling process inference can be either asymptotic or bootstrap based in principle the bootstrap is an ideal tool since in this paper i ignore issues of complex sampling schemes and suppose that observations are iid however both bootstrap inference and to a considerably greater extent asymptotic inference can fall foul of difficulties associated with the heavy right hand tails observed with many income distributions i mention some recent attempts to circumvent these difficulties ce memoire tente de fournir une vue synthetique des diverses techniques disponibles pour faire des inferences a partir des repartitions de revenus on peut distinguer deux approches principales l une dans laquelle l objet vise est un indice d inegalite de revenus ou de pauvrete l autre est construite sur des notions de dominance stochastique d un point de vue statistique plusieurs techniques sont utilisees par les deux approches mais certaines techniques sont specifiques a l une ou a l autre approche l auteur postule que l inference a propos de quantites demographiques est fondee sur un echantillon ou des echantillons et que formellement tout le caractere aleatoire est attribuable au processus d echantillonnage l inference est soit asymptotique soit derivee par des technique de bootstrap en principe la seconde facon de proceder est un outil ideal puisque dans ce memoire l auteur ignore les problemes de procedures d echantillonnage complexes et presume que les observations sont idd cependant la seconde facon de proceder et encore plus la premiere peuvent rencontrer des difficultes associees au fait que l on observe des queues de distribution epaisses vers la droite dans plusieurs profils de repartition des revenus l auteur mentionne certains efforts recents pour contourner ces difficultes

trickling down the rising tide new estimates of the link between poverty and the macroeconomy this paper uses pooled time series regressions of regional data to reexamine the link between poverty and the macroeconomy the use of disaggregated data provides additional degrees of freedom and permits the inclusion of controls for demographic changes and increased income inequality the results indicate a stronger relationship between poverty rates and the macroeconomy in the 1980s than that found in prior research and confirm that the dramatic reduction in unemployment during the late 1990s was instrumental in reducing poverty rates the estimated results for the 1990s imply a 0 4 0 9 increase in the poverty rate for each 1 increase in the unemployment rate

a note on environmental awareness and cross border pollution considering a nash equilibrium in which a developed country chooses the amount of foreign aid and a developing country sets the emission tax rate and the proportion of the received aid allocated to public abatement of pollution it is shown that an increase in the recipient country s environmental awareness will reduce the level of cross border pollution and benefits the donor though its foreign aid is increased

on a non cooperative theory of technology transfer abstract this paper shows that it might be profitable for a firm with advanced technology to sell the knowledge to a competing firm with less efficient technology and still remain in the business a non corperative equilibrium with technology transfer may pareto dominate the initial equilibrium without technology transfer in this paper it is shown that technology agreement is likely to occur between firms which are reasonably close in terms of their initial technologies such an equilibrium is an interesting possibility in the absence of credibly sustainable collusive outcomes

natural disasters and macroeconomic performance recent empirical research has shown that output and gdp per capita in the aftermath of natural disasters are not necessarily lower than before the event in many cases both are not significantly affected and surprisingly sometimes they are found to respond positively to natural disasters here we propose a novel economic theory that explains these observations specifically we show that gdp is driven above its pre shock level when natural disasters destroy predominantly durable consumption goods cars furniture etc disasters destroying mainly productive capital in contrast are predicted to reduce gdp insignificant responses of gdp can be expected when disasters destroy both durable goods and productive capital we extend the model by a residential housing sector and show that disasters may also have an insignificant impact on gdp when they destroy residential houses and durable goods we show that disasters irrespective of whether their impact on gdp is positive negative or insignificant entail considerable losses of aggregate welfare

impure public goods and transfers in a three agent model abstract this paper extends previous models of non cooperative private funding of pure public goods by allowing for impure public goods the analysis is developed in the context of international public goods under certain conditions the consequences of transfers on utility are paradoxical if the preferences are divergent a country may gain by giving a transfer the receiver may lose and these two phenomena may appear at the same time

statistical inference for the measurement of the incidence of taxes and transfers we establish the asymptotic sampling distribution of general functions of quantile based estimators computed from samples that are not necessarily independent the results provide the statistical framework within which to assess the progressivity of taxes and benefits their horizontal inequity and the change in the inequality of income which they cause by the same token these findings characterise the sampling distribution of a number of popular indices of progressivity horizontal inequity and redistribution they can also be used to assess welfare and inequality changes using panel data and to assess poverty when it depends on estimated population quantiles we illustrate these results using micro data on the incidence of taxes and benefits in canada

the measurement and trend of housing inequality in the united states 1978 85 inequality in housing services for renters owners and all households in the united states is estimated for 1978 and 1985 hedonic techniques are applied to data from the american housing survey to derive values for housing services that include publicly provided as well as subsidized housing we find significant disparities in housing but substantially less inequality than in incomes in 1978 the top decile garnered 19 2 of housing services while the bottom decile received only 5 1 the trend however is towards greater equality in housing with large and statistically significant shifts across all deciles by 1985 the share of the top decile dropped to 16 3 a percentage decrease in share of 15 3 while that of the bottom decile rose to 5 7 a percentage increase of 11 4

laffer strikes again dynamic scoring of capital taxes abstract we set up a neoclassical growth model extended by a corporate sector an investment and finance decision of firms and a set of taxes on capital income we provide analytical dynamic scoring of taxes on corporate income dividends capital gains other private capital income and depreciation allowances and identify the intricate ways through which capital taxation affects tax revenue in general equilibrium we then calibrate the model for the us and explore quantitatively the revenue effects from capital taxation we take adjustment dynamics after a tax change explicitly into account and compare with steady state effects we find among other results a self financing degree of corporate tax cuts of about 70 90 and a very flat laffer curve for all capital taxes as well as for tax depreciation allowances results are strongest for the tax on capital gains the model predicts for the us that total tax revenue increases by about 0 3 1 2 after abolishment of the tax

uncertainty and fiscal cliffs motivated by the us fiscal cliin 2012 this paper considers the short and longer term impact of uncertainty generated by scal policy empirical evidence shows in creases in economic policy uncertainty lower investment and employment investment that is longer lived and subject to a longer planning horizon responds to policy uncer tainty with a lag while capital that depreciates more quickly and can be installed with few costs falls immediately a dsge model incorporating uncertainty over future tax regimes produces responses to scal uncertainty that match key features of the data the model features uncertainty over the average tax rate and rational expectations about the resolution of uncertainty with speci c outcomes and timing uncertainty injects noise into the economy and lowers the level of economic activity

nutrition and nonparticipation in the us food stamp programme microdata from the national food consumption survey are used to test for differences in caloric and protein intake distributions we compare poor households that participate in the us food stamp programme to eligible households that do not participate tests for stochastic dominance provide unambiguous evidence that eligible nonparticipants suffer from relative undernutrition compared to participating households probit analysis is used to identify characteristics of participating and nonparticipating households

the impact of depreciation savings on investment evidence from the corporate alternative minimum tax over the past decade the united states has offered investment incentives in the form of larger depreciation savings namely bonus depreciation the neoclassical investment model implies that investment responds to changes in depreciation savings but there have been few direct attempts to investigate this implication this paper examines investment patterns surrounding the 1999 shortening of the alternative minimum tax amt depreciation recovery periods finding strong evidence that firms subject to the amt increase investment in response to the amt reform the empirical results show that firms subject to the amt increase their investment measured as the ratio of capital expenditures to capital stock by around 0 0418 to 0 0622 compared to firms subject to the regular tax given their average annual investment rate of approximately 0 27 during this period the results imply a relative increase in investment of 15 23 by contrast i find that the 2002 introduction of bonus depreciation available both for firms subject to the regular tax and for firms subject to the amt affects both groups of firms similarly the estimation uses an empirical specification developed from the summers 1981 tax adjusted q model and the results imply that the responsiveness of investment to the tax term is somewhat larger than previously estimated

theories of risk testing investor behaviour on the taiwan stock and stock index futures markets investor behavior towards risk lies at the heart of economic decision making in general and modern investment theory and practice in particular this paper uses both the mean variance mv criterion and stochastic dominance sd procedures to analyze the preferences for four of the most widely studied investor types in the taiwan stock and stock index futures market we find that risk averters concave utility function prefer spot to futures whereas risk seekers convex utility function prefer futures to spot our findings also show that investors with s shaped utility functions prefer spot futures to futures spot when markets move upward downward finally our results imply that investors with reverse s shaped utility functions prefer futures spot to spot futures when markets move upward downward these results are robust with respect to sub periods spot returns including dividends and diversification although we do not check whether risk averters risk seekers and investors with s shaped and reverse sshaped utility functions actually exist in the market we do show that their existence is plausible the implications of our findings on market efficiency and the existence of arbitrage opportunities are also discussed in this study

tax policy and business fixed investment in the united states abstract this paper derives and estimates models of nonresidential investment behavior in which current and future tax conditions directly affect the incentive to invest the estimates suggest that taxes have played an independent role in affecting postwar u s investment behavior particularly for investment in machinery and equipment in addition the paper develops a method for assessing the impact of tax policy on the volatility of investment when such policy is endogenous illustrative calculations using this technique based on the paper s empirical estimates suggest that tax policy has not served to stabilize investment in equipment or nonresidential structures during the sample period

the effects of fiscal stimulus evidence from the 2009 cash for clunkers program we evaluate the impact of the 2009 cash for clunkers program on short and medium run auto purchases our empirical strategy exploits variation across u s cities in ex ante exposure to the program as measured by the number of clunkers in the city as of summer 2008 we find that the program induced the purchase of an additional 370 000 cars in july and august 2009 however we find strong evidence of reversal high clunker counties bought fewer autos in the 10 months after the program expired which offset most of the initial purchases we find no evidence of an effect on employment house prices or household default rates in cities with higher exposure to the program jel codes h20 e62 copyright 2012 oxford university press

the incentives for north south transfer of climate mitigation technologies with trade in polluting goods the need to transfer climate mitigation technologies towards the developing world has been acknowledged since the beginning of climate negotiations little progress has however been made as shown by article 10 of the paris agreement one reason is that these technologies could become vital assets to compete on global markets this paper presents a partial equilibrium model with two regions the north and the south and imperfect competition in the international polluting goods market to analyze the north s incentives to accept technology transfer results crucially depend on the existence of environmental cooperation when both northern and southern governments set emission quotas non cooperatively inducing fewer global emissions is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the north to accept the transfer in contrast when governments set quotas cooperatively the north has no incentive to share its technology either before or after the agreement technology transfer commitments may be included in the agreement but with no effect on global emissions and global surplus the only impacts are distributional technology transfers and side payments may be substitute instruments

effects of technology transfers on the provision of public goods in this paper we examine the viability ofcooperative policies oriented to the resolution oftransboundary pollution problems using the theory ofprivate provision of public goods in a two countrymodel we analyze the effects on economic welfare ofvoluntary technological transfers oriented to reducingthe emission of pollutants

convergence of the south and non south income distributions 1969 1979 income distribution and inequalities in the southern united states are analyzed and compared with data for the rest of the country the evidence presented in this paper reveals that in the 1970s the souths income distribution either converged or moved significantly closer to the income distribution of the rest of the country the degree of convergence depends on the definition of the recipient unit and to a degree on the particular cost of living index used to deflate southern and non southern incomes the convergence is attributed in part to the labor unionization in the northeast and the resulting relocation of companies to the south data are from the 1970 and 1980 censuses and concern total household income excerpt

interest rates and the market for new light vehicles we study the impact of interest rates changes on both the demand for and supply of new light vehicles in an environment where consumers and manufacturers face their own interest rates an increase in the consumers interest rate raises their cost of financing and thus lowers the demand for new vehicles an increase in the manufacturers interest rate raises their cost of holding inventories both channels have equilibrium effects that are amplified and propagated over time through inventories which serve as a way to both smooth production and facilitate greater sales at a given price through the estimation of a dynamic stochastic market equilibrium model we find evidence of both channels at work and of the important role played by inventories a temporary 100 basis point increase in both interest rates causes vehicle production to fall 12 percent and sales to fall 3 25 percent at an annual rate in the short run

on the marginal source of investment funds abstract under the new view of dividend taxation developed by auerbach quarterly journal of economics 1979 93 433 446 bradford journal of public economics 1981 15 1 22 and king public policy and the corporation chapman hall london 1977 the marginal source of finance for new investment projects is retained earnings in this case the tax advantage of retaining earnings precisely offsets the double taxation of subsequent dividends taxes on dividends have no impact on the investment incentives of firms using retentions as a marginal source of funds and paying dividends with residual cash flows we show that the same invariance with respect to dividend taxes may hold under weaker conditions with respect to the source of funds if the use of funds follows the same pattern we find evidence that there is significant heterogeneity in our sample of us firms with some firms exhibiting dividend behavior consistent with this expanded version of the new view and others exhibiting behavior consistent with the traditional view that retained earnings are not an important marginal source of funds

international public goods and contribution productivity differentials abstract this paper investigates the impacts of productivity differentials in contributing to the public good on national welfare in the context of non cooperative voluntary provision of a pure public good a country with high productivity does not necessarily enjoy high welfare subsidizing the other country in a contribution game may lead to a strong paradoxical result while a lump sum transfer will lead to a weak paradoxical result we also explore the relationship between the price of the public good and the size of an open club in a multi club model

temporary investment tax incentives theory with evidence from bonus depreciation even modest reductions in the after tax cost of capital purchases provide strong incentives for increased investment indeed for tax subsidies that are temporary and for capital goods that are very long lived the incentive to invest when the after tax price is temporarily low is essentially infinite firms that would have purchased new capital equipment in the future instead make their purchases during the period of the subsidy for tax increases the effects are the opposite firms that would have normally invested now delay until the tax rate returns to normal we present a model of the equilibrium effects of temporary investment tax incentives the model reveals a simple relationship between the shadow price of investment goods and the size of a temporary investment tax incentive specifically for sufficiently long lived capital goods goods with very low rates of economic depreciation and for sufficiently short lived investment tax subsidies the shadow value of capital should be nearly unchanged and thus the pre tax shadow price of capital goods should fully reflect the magnitude of the tax subsidy this result holds regardless of the elasticity of investment supply and regardless of the underlying demand for capital instead it relies only on the firm s ability to arbitrage predictable movements in the after tax price of long lived capital over time two conclusions immediately follow first observ ing price increases following a temporary tax incentive is not evidence that investment supply is relatively inelastic a temporary investment tax subsidy can substantially affect investment even if it bids up the price of investment sharply second because economic theory dictates that the shadow price of investment moves one for one with a temporary tax subsidy the elasticity of supply can be inferred from quantity data alone recent changes in us tax law allow us to use the model and its implications to estimate struc tural parameters that govern the supply of investment the 2002 and 2003 tax bills provided temporarily accelerated tax depreciation called bonus depreciation for certain types of qualified capital goods under the 2002 bill firms could immediately deduct 30 percent of investment purchases and then depreciate the remaining 70 percent under standard depreciation schedules

a finnish soviet acid rain game noncooperative equilibria cost efficiency and sulfur agreements abstract this study analyzes cost effectiveness in environmental cooperation between finland and the soviet union it is assumed that the aim of both countries is to attain a given target deposition level at minimum possible sulfur abatement costs cost effective cooperation is compared to noncooperative equilibrium and to the agreement on sulfur emissions between these two countries it is shown that the agreement is not cost effective implies higher abatement costs than under noncooperation and is strategically unstable however the cost differences and the incentives to cheat are small the computations reveal that the main source of potential cooperation benefits is not asymmetrical emission transportation or differences in abatement costs but rather different target deposition levels for finland and the soviet union

tax reform and u s economic growth in this paper we evaluate the impact of the tax reform act of 1986 on u s economic growth we first calculate effective tax rates on income from capital employed in corporate noncorporate and household sectors we then project the future growth of the u s economy with and without the 1986 tax reform we find that much of the potential gain in welfare was dissipated through failure to index the income tax base for inflation the most promising avenue for future reform is to include income from household assets in the tax base while reducing tax rates on business income