tax policy uncertainty and corporate investment abstract the anticipatory effects of a corporate tax reform of the tax cut cum base broadening variety are analyzed in a dynamic stochastic adjustment model of firm behavior focusing on the case where the firm is uncertain both about the timing and the contents of the expected reform the value of the firm is solved prior to and after the reform the existence of investment spurts prior to the implementation of the tax reform is established rigorous results are derived under constant returns and the effects of diminishing returns are explained the expectation of a future tax cut causes the firm to accelerate optimal investment while the expectation of a reduction in the tax base the rate of fiscal depreciation has the opposite effect for a firm which updates information timing uncertainty interacts with the expectation effect moreover increased timing uncertainty may accelerate or decelerate investment as an optimal response to an expected tax cut futhermore for reasonable assumptions it is shown that a rate cut cum base broadening tax reform of the type implemented in several oecd countries in the 1980s and 1990s cannot be revenue neutral

capital allocation how the us compares with other major industrialized nations data for the seven major industrialized nations spanning two decades provide evidence that capital formation as a percentage of gross domestic product differs significantly among the major industrialized nations comparatively the us ranks among the leaders in residential structures and among the lowest in commercial structures however us private sector allocation of capital to machinery and equipment appears to be in line with other major trading nations the rate of capital cost recovery appears to affect the amount of capital allocated to commercial structures but not to residential structures or machinery and equipment likewise changes in the capital cost recovery provisions under the economic recovery tax act of 1981 seem to have led to an increase in capital allocated to commercial structures and to a marginal increase in capital allocated to machinery and equipment

the role of subsidies in promoting italian joint ventures in least developed and transition economies this paper analyses the impact of subsidies to promote italian joint ventures jvs with firms in ldc and transition economies the empirical analysis is carried out on a unique dataset of 172 jvs interviewed during 1998 by means of a closed answer qualitative quantitative questionnaire the main finding of the study is that although there is a significant deadweight component in incentive policy subsidised firms are significantly more likely to grow moreover jvs comprising new firms which need to grow to survive also achieve a higher than average employment performance and so too do labour intensive jvs motivated by the search for lower labour costs and jvs in east european countries

do tax allowances stimulate investment considerable empirical work on investment behavior makes use of a capital cost variable to capture the effects of various corporate tax allowances the assumption behind most of this work is that all available tax allowances may be claimed by the firms however there are several reasons why this may not be true one purpose of this paper is to explore the effect on capital cost of assuming that firms have unused tax allowances and that the investment funds system if system is not used to finance marginal investments during periods of if releases another purpose is to construct econometric investment functions in order to compare the performance of alternative definitions of capital cost in fact the hypothesis that tax allowances do not have the effect on capital cost implied by a mechanical interpretation of statutory tax rules cannot be rejected in particular if releases may raise the return on intramarginal investment rather than create investment incentives

business political power the case of taxation we examine contending views about the forms and mechanisms of business power in u s politics by estimating time series models explaining taxation and redistribution taxation and redistribution constitute strong cases for theories about business and class power since all firms have an interest in reducing taxation we find that changes in corporate taxation and in redistribution between capital gains income and earned income and between corporate taxation and individual taxation are strongly influenced by political partisanship with democratic administrations increasing the tax burden on firms and their owners how far corporations engage in electoral financing measured through the establishment of corporate political action committees is also influential the models show some evidence consistent with the understanding of class power conceptualized by bowles gordon and weisskopf and the presence of election cycle effects but inconsistent with implications arising from the structural dependence of the state on capital and asset concentration in the largest corporations as a mechanism of class power

regional policy incentives and the relative costs of capital in assisted areas in britain and germany bennett r j and krebs g 1989 regional policy incentives and the relative costs of capital in assisted areas in britain and germany reg studies 23 201 218 regional policies of various forms have been employed in most european countries both as means of stimulating investment in problem regions and as an attempt to limit the pace of industrial contraction this paper evaluates the resulting incentives to capital in britain and germany and compares the stimulus provided by the different packages of incentives over time and between the two countries it is demonstrated that pre tax real rates of return and fiscal wedges between pre and post tax real rates of return are affected very markedly by the incentive packages in britain fiscal wedges of 3 derive from regional policy up to the late 1970s but decline to 1 6 in the mid 1980s in germany fiscal wedges increase from 3 to 3 5 over the same period on a standardized basis of comparison thus declines in the significance of regional po

tax asymmetries the cost of capital and investment some evidence from united kingdom panel data a measure of the cost of capital is developed that incorporates the dynamic effects of tax changes and tax asymmetries estimates of the cost of capital are made using an unbalanced panel of 1987 u k quoted companies over the period 1971 to 1984 there is wide cross sectional variation in the cost of capital the measure is used in estimating an equation where this cross sectional variation is found to be a significant determinant of the level of company investment copyright 1989 by royal economic society

taxes tariffs and transfer pricing in multinational corporate decision making three interrelated aspects of u s multinational corporation activity are analyzed here the ability to shift profits from high tax countries to low tax countries the impact of host country taxes and tariffs on the distribution of real capital and the influence of these policies on international trade patterns of the united states and host countries the cross sectional empirical analysis indicates that the observed pattern of reported profits in high and low tax countries is consistent with income shifting behavior and that real investment responds to host country effective tax rates and tariffs the united states appears both to import more from and export more to low tax countries where mnc investment is greater but this bilateral focus must be amplified to consider multilateral effects if trade benefits are to be projected copyright 1991 by mit press

the federal funds market under bank deregulation the introduction of competitive interest rates on deposits is shown to effect the optimal decisions of banks by altering their optimal forecast of the federal funds rate the movement toward co mpetitive deposit rates increases the size of the monetary base neces sary for the fed to maintain its deposit targets when deposits and the monetary base are substitutes in addition there is less uncertainty in the federal funds market under competitive deposit rates when deposits and the monetary base are substitutes and the source of uncertainty is not from the supply of deposits copyright 1987 by ohio state university press

competition and interest rate ceilings in commercial banking regulations prohibiting the payment of explicit interest on demand deposits are gradually being eased as banks switch from payment in the form of free services to explicit interest both the level of money demand and the response of money demand to market interest rates will change banks are modeled here as being chamberlinian monopolistic competitors equilibrium deposit interest rate relationships are found for markets both with and without an effective interest rate ceiling and the behavior of the two markets is compared the elimination of deposit interest rate ceilings leads to increased money demand and an increased responsiveness of deposit rates to market interest rates

uncertainty welfare cost and the adaptability of u s corporate taxes alternative corporate tax systems differ in their ability to adapt to changes in the rate of inflation in the absence of complete indexing of depreciation allowances policymakers may use a particular expected inflation rate to set accelerated depreciation allowances in a way that minimizes the welfare loss from the misallocation of capital this welfare loss is a nonlinear function of the assumed inflation rate however so the welfare loss at the expected inflation rate may be quite different from the expected welfare loss we compute these two welfare concepts for each of three alternative corporate tax schemes in the u s and for two different relationships between inflation and interest rates one important finding is that the auerbach jorgenson first year recovery plan is not equivalent to indexing as is often claimed if uncertainty about inflation implies uncertainty about the real after tax discount rate

how effective are fiscal incentives for r d a review of the evidence this paper surveys the econometric evidence on the effectiveness of fiscal incentives for r d we describe the effects of tax systems in oecd countries on the user cost of r d the current position changes over time and across different firms in different countries we describe and criticize the methodologies used to evaluate the effect of the tax system on

the vanishing harberger triangle this paper shows that the double taxation of corporate dividends or profit repatriations implies a nucleus theory of the corporation after the firm is set up with a small stock of original capital it enters a phase of purely internal growth during which no dividends are paid and no shares are issued the phase terminates when an efficient stock of capital has been accumulated and dividends are paid during the growth phases the tax distortion is inversely related to the tax burden and it is larger than conventional formulae for the cost of internal and external equity finance suggest

money demand instability has it ended abstract some researchers suggest that much of the seeming instability in the post 1973 money demand occurred because of financial innovation and deregulation money demand was in transition further unprecedented declines in the income velocity of circulation during 1985 and 1986 indicate that this hypothesized transition continues have the effects of financial innovation and deregulation run their course do additional unexpected shifts in velocity loom in the near future or has the transition come to a halt these questions are examined using the methodology of hafer and hein 1982 as modified by miller 1986 no evidence of structural shifts exists beyond 1986 m1 growth may have become a reliable monetary aggregate target again further the missing money has more than returned more money is held today than predicted by the pre 1973 money demand function since m1 now includes interest bearing transactions accounts and incorporates a saving motive the finding is not counterintuitive

the repatriation incentive of the foreign dividend exemption system abstractdue to the high taxation of domestic corporate income japanese multinational enterprises have avoided to repatriate foreign profits to japan for quite some time as a consequence the japanese government introduced a new taxation system in 2009 the so called dividend exemption system which was aimed at reducing the effective tax burden of foreign dividends of japanese multinational companies in order to increase tax revenue and stimulate economic growth applying a theoretical framework which allows comparing the repatriation incentive of the old and new japanese tax systems we find that in the long run the tax regime change fails to incentivize foreign subsidiaries to repatriate foreign profits especially subsidiaries with high leverage located in countries with low corporate taxes and low dividend taxes might reinvest rather than distribute their earnings in the dividend exemption method

measuring the deadweight loss from taxation in a small open economy a general method with an application to sweden the paper develops a simple general equilibrium framework for calculating the marginal deadweight loss from taxation in a small open economy the framework allows a decomposition of the deadweight loss from each tax instrument into the losses stemming from the contraction of the different tax bases the paper describes a method of calibrating the model which exploits the links between the various factor supply elasticities implied by the standard life cycle model it also develops a method of estimating effective tax rates that is consistent with optimising household and firm behaviour to illustrate how the model works it is calibrated to a data set for sweden the quantitative results highlight the importance of accounting for the interaction between the major tax bases when estimating deadweight loss

optimal technology choice and investment timing a stochastic model of industrial cogeneration vs heat only production abstract in this paper we develop an economic model that explains the decision making problem under uncertainty of an industrial firm that wants to invest in a process technology more specifically the decision is between making an irreversible investment in a combined heat and power production cogeneration system or to invest in a conventional heat only generation system steam boiler and to purchase all electricity from the grid in our model we include the main economic and technical variables of the investment decision process we also account for the risk and uncertainty inherent in volatile energy prices that can greatly affect the valuation of the investment project the dynamic stochastic model presented allows us to simultaneously determine the optimal technology choice and investment timing we apply the theoretical model and illustrate our main findings with a numerical example that is based on realistic cost values for industrial oil or gas fired cogeneration and heat only generation in switzerland we also briefly discuss expected effects of a co 2 tax on the investment decision

the now account experiment and the demand for money abstract the authors use the now account experience in new england from 1972 to 1978 to estimate the responsiveness of the demand for money to interest payments on checkable accounts such an estimate is important in considering the effects on the demand for money of nationwide now s and of variations in interest rates on transactions balances in the future with new england as the experimental region and the rest of the united states as a control group the authors develop a cross section time series framework to isolate and to estimate the interest rate responsiveness of money demand while accounting for effects of income interest rates and gradual adjustment

share repurchases the new view and the cost of capital this paper counters the view that the possibility of share repurchases invalidates the predictions of the new or trapped equity view of corporate taxation it is shown that the new view s basic cost of capital expression which distinguishes it from the old view remains valid regardless of the proportions in which corporate distributions of earnings split into share repurchases and ordinary dividend payments it is widely held that the new view of corporate taxation put forward by auerbach 1979 1983 l3radford 1981 king 1977 fullerton and king 1984 and others is incompatible with the phenomenon of share repurchases share repurchases it is maintained undermine this view s basic premise that the corporate firm is an equity trap and thus invalidate its predictions of the firm s investment behavior in my letter i argue that this verdict may be premature while i certainly do not want to claim to have isolated the forces that determine the firm s choice between dividend payments and share repurchases i hesitate to accept the argument that the invalidity of one of a theory s assumptions will necessarily render its predictions incorrect to be precise i will show that the new view s basic cost of capital expression that distinguishes it from the old view stays valid regardless of the proportions in which corporate distributions of earnings split into share repurchases and ordinary dividend payments consider a stylized class of capital income tax systems that resembles the class operative in the 0ecd countries let 7r be the rate of corporate tax on retained earnings rd the rate of corporate tax on dividends which equals rr in the us rc the effective rate of tax on accrued capital gains rdp the rate of personal tax on dividend income and 7 the rate of personal tax on interest income where

restricted redistributive taxation shadow prices and trade policy abstract this paper reports on the use of an algorithm to compute optimal policies in the areas of commodity taxation international trade and public shadow pricing for a government which is interested in redistributing income but has limited powers of taxation the algorithm is applied to selected ldc data using a highly simplified general equilibrium model some insight into the relationships between constraints on taxation and other areas of government policy is provided by analyzing models where domestic tax restrictions can make inefficient public production or tariffs on international trade desirable

financial innovation and the demand for liquid assets note introduction recent innovations in the banking and finance sector have caused great difficulties for the conduct of monetary policy shifts in monetary aggregates unexplained by interest rate behavior when there are financial innovations make it difficult for the monetary authorities either to use an asset demand function in the conduct of monetary policy or to distill information from the behavior of monetary aggregates while the monetary authorities may know the specific innovations they generally do not know how these innovations will affect particular aggregates clearly such knowledge is important and essential since then the monetary authorities can more accurately interpret growth rates of the monetary aggregates and reduce policy mistakes especially when the growth rates of various aggregates differ substantially and the authorities must determine which aggregate is more reflective of general monetary conditions hester 1981 freedman 1983 and pierce 1984 among others have documented and discussed many of the specific financial innovations for the united states and canada as outlined by pierce these innovations generally can be divided into three types i those innovations which have lowered transactions costs for asset purchases and sales ii the emergence of previously unavailable assets and iii those innovations which allow institutions to avoid reserve requirements hester has theoretically analyzed the last of these this paper focuses on the other types of innovations primarily the first transactions or transfer costs are an important aspect of asset demands since most near money assets possess approximately equivalent risk characteristics the two most important features of competing assets are return and liquidity liquidity can be defined as the cost of transfer to an acceptable means of payment over the last decade both relative and absolute transfer costs and thus liquidity have varied dramatically and have generally been reduced this has caused substitutions between assets and thus shifts in monetary aggregates unexplained by macroeconomic variables such as income and interest rates it is such unexplained shifts over the last decade which have caused concern over the appropriate definitions of monetary aggregates

measuring marginal income tax rates for individuals in canada averages and distributions over time average marginal tax rates amtrs and the dispersion of marginal tax rates across income groups for canada over 1947 91 are reported federal amtrs fluctuated with little trend from 1947 to the mid 1960s rose to the mid 1970s fell and then rose from the early 1980s through to 1991 federal plus provincial amtrs trended upward after 1949 increasing fastest from the mid 1960s to the mid 1970s relative dispersion of mtrs shows a strong downward trend over the sample period this compression has been due partly to a decline in top mtrs but the main influence has been the steady increase in the portion of the population and of income subject to tax the amtr time series is quite volatile difference stationarity is not rejected

growth effect of taxes in an endogenous growth model to what extent do taxes affect economic growth abstract this paper presents an endogenous growth model comprising of financial human and physical capital and incorporating major features of a general tax system technology and preference parameter values in the model are chosen to fit the actual growth experiences of the united states and a rapidly growing east asian nic using the calibrated model i assess the role of differences in taxes and other variables in explaining the difference in growth rates the main findings are i the difference in tax systems across countries explains a significant proportion around 30 of the difference in growth rates ii the difference in preferences explains at most 4 and iii differences in labor income tax debt equity ratio and inflation can be important in explaining the growth difference further i evaluate the contribution of the monetary factor to the growth rate gap and the growth effect of us tax reforms e g revenue neutral changes in relative tax structure

government policy and industrial investment in cogeneration in the usa abstract this paper presents an economic analysis of investment in cogeneration in selected industries and assesses the impact of investment tax credits policy directed at cogeneration we use a dynamic partial equilibrium model that is derived under the assumption that investment in cogeneration occurs if and when the annualized cost of the incremental investment is less than the annualized benefits of avoiding electricity purchase from the utilities policy simulations show that investment in cogeneration is economically feasible even without the tax credits the tax credit policy marginally increases investment in cogeneration the welfare distortions and revenue loss to the us treasury are also estimated external benefits required per barrel of oil to offset distortion costs would come to 2 83

the investment funds system reconsidered this paper studies the effects of the swedish investment funds system if on the cost of capital it is shown that the incentive effects critically depend on which regime the firm is in when the funds are released by the government and which regime it expects to be in in the future for quite reasonable assumptions if releases turn on to have much less impact on the incentive to invest than conventionally assumed

the implications of risk and irreversibility for the measurement of marginal effective tax rates on capital the implications of risk and irreversibility for the measurement of marginal effective tax rates on capital are examined it is shown that when capital is irreversible the marginal effective tax rate is an increasing function of systematic and unsystematic capital and income risk the tax system may thus distort investments in risky capital to a much greater extent than is implied by previous research that ignored irreversibilities marginal effective tax rate calculations based upon the canadian corporate tax system are provided

portfolio redistribution impacts within the narrow monetary aggregate a number of important monetary and financial changes occurred in the 1980s a rising question among monetary economists is whether the character of m1 has changed substantially as a result in particular a frequent contention is that interest bearing checkable deposits behave as a savings type asset thus subjecting m1 to portfolio redistribution effects in the modern era this research examines the elasticities of substitution for a variety of financial assets pre and post 1980 results indicate that m1 subcomponents do show significant substitution with savings type assets however the portfolio redistribution impacts are not confined to the interest bearing checkable deposits further results indicate that this behavior is not unique to the 1980s copyright 1992 by ohio state university press

evaluating the minimum asset tax on corporations an option pricing approach abstract king fullerton methodology cannot assess the minimum asset tax because it cannot handle uncertainty we present an alternative based on option pricing and show how carryover rules depreciation conventions and uncertainty affect the mat burden using brazilian data we show a because of the high intersectoral variance of returns on capital the mat does not reduce sectoral distortions b while high variance raises the mat burden high risk firms are not hit harder by the mat high risk firms also have a high rate of return which reduces the impact of the mat

welfare and optimum dynamic taxation of consumption and income abstract this paper estimates that the us could attain large welfare gains by implementing an optimal ramsey tax policy that taxes consumption and income it is also found that the welfare implications associated with taxing consumption are quantitatively more important than those associated with dynamically taxing income indeed replacing income taxes with a constant consumption tax leads to a welfare gain that is only slightly lower than that attained by a dynamic policy that taxes consumption and income in computing these welfare gains careful attention is given to the dynamic path of tax rates and the transitional dynamics associated with how the economy responds to a new tax policy

impact of tax reform on renewable energy and cogeneration projects abstract this study examines the sensitivity of renewable energy and cogeneration project returns to proposed changes in the federal tax code specifically to reforms proposed in 1985 by president reagan we examine six different technologies by defining typical configurations project cash flows are projected over a twelve year horizon and the investor s internal rate of return irr is calculated we calculate changes in irr as various proposed tax changes are assumed to take effect we find that capital intensive projects such as geothermal and small hydro suffer most from proposed tax code changes conversely the least capital intensive projects cogeneration fare best

the taxation of corporate investment income in canada an analysis of marginal effective tax rates this paper reports estimates of marginal effective tax rates on corporate investment income in canada taking into account sales taxes as well as corporation personal and business property taxes marginal effective tax rates are found to vary widely depending upon the type of asset acquired the industry in which the asset is used the manner in which the investment is financed and the tax status of the investor supplying the funds an examination of the sensitivity of these estimates to various tax arbitrage assumptions reveals the pattern of marginal effective tax rates to be similar irrespective of the arbitrage assumption used l imposition des revenus dinvestissement des societes au canada une analyse des taux marginaux effectifs ce memoire evalue les taux marginaux effectifs d imposition des revenus d investissement des societes au canada en tenant compte des taxes de vente aussi bien que des impots personnels et des impots sur les profits et sur les actifs des societes i1 appert que les taux marginaux effectifs d imposition varient grandement selon le type d actif acquis l industrie dans laquelle cet actif est utilise la faqon dont cet

the banking industry under uncertain monetary policy abstract the optimal loan decisions of banks are shown to be dependent on the banks rational forecast of the future federal funds rate which in turn is related to the policy rule used by the fed consequently a change in the policy of the fed will alter the reduced form model of the banking industry this result brings into question the fed s ability to predict and control the money stock under the procedure adopted by the fed between october 1979 and september 1982

shadow prices consistency and the value of life this paper examines the consequences of inconsistent shadow pricing the principal example of such inconsistency is the value of life safety second best shadow pricing policy is shown to depend upon how public sector budgets are allocated and the principle that public sector decision makers should agree to a consistent shadow price is shown to require information unlikely to be available a weaker consistency principle requiring minimal information is then developed

short run politicians and long run tax revenue an empirical assessment a life cycle growth model fit to the u s economy is used to calculate the tax rate that would maximize steady state tax revenue the rate that would be set by a short run politician interested in maximizing current period receipts is also calculated in the current period the capital stock is fixed but labor is a variable factor following the intuition of buchanan and lee 1982 it might be suspected that this fixity of capital would lead the short run politician to set taxes above the steady state revenue maximizing level however such a conclusion does not hold for the cases considered in this study

the behavior of money demand in the 1980s existing money demand functions did not predict the strength in m1 in the 1980s this strength derived from the combination of a change in the character of m 1 due to elnancial deregulation and the sharp fall in market rates that began in 1982 the public s m2 demand function however remains unaffected by the forces that altered the m1 demand function the character of the public s m 1 demand function changed with the legalization nationwide in january 1981 of the checkable deposits known as nows because nows pay explicit interest they are used by the public as an instrument for saving as well as for effecting transactions mehra 1986 the addition of nows to m1 therefore caused m1 to become more highly substitutible with the savings instruments included in the non ml component of m2 that is savings deposits small time deposits money market deposit accounts mmdas and money market mutual funds of noninstitutional investors mmmfs furthermore financial institutions move the rate paid on nows only sluggishly in response to changes in market rates in contrast the rates paid on small time deposits mmdas and mmmfs move promptly in response to changes in market rates consequently when market rates fell beginning in late summer 1982 the differential between the rates paid on the non ml components of m2 and on nows fell sharply the public then substituted out of the non ml components of m2 and into the nows in m1 these substitutions increased m1 de

uk stock relief legislation and the short run tax elasticity of inventory investment abstract this paper analyzes the effects of uk stock relief legislation on the cost of capital for inventory investment taking account of the tax position of individual companies a sample of large uk companies representative of the uk non oil non financial corporate sector is used to make calculations of the cost of capital both for aggregate corporate inventory investment and for various industrial sectors stock relief legislation reduces the cost of capital by between 4 and 8 per annum the tax position of individual companies generally makes only a small difference to the aggregate cost of capital stock relief legislation induces a pronounced seasonality in the cost of capital due to the uneven distribution of the end date of company accounting years this seasonality is exploited in time series estimates of the short run elasticity on the pre tax and post tax cost of capital for six manufacturing subsectors there is some evidence of a significant effect from the pre tax cost of capital on inventory investment but no evidence of any response to the tax incentives created by the stock relief legislation

the social opportunity cost of capital in the presence of labour market distortions this paper examines the conditions under which the social opportunity cost of capital in a tax distorted economy is equal to the gross of tax return to capital plus the excess of the market over the shadow wage bill whenever public investment serves as an unpriced or underpriced input in the private sector s production process only part of the excess of the market over the shadow wage bill should be attributed to private sector capital in addition whenever some of the benefits of public investment are appropriated by owners of capital the gross of tax return to capital will tend to overstate the genuine marginal product of capital the overall implication is that the social discount rate may be less than the gross of tax rate of return to capital in the private sector even if public investment crowds out private investment dollar for dollar

unemployment collective bargaining and the demand for protection there is a widespread consensus among nonacademic observers that labor unions with large numbers of unemployed members have been central actors in political coalitions demanding protectionist trade policies since the mid 1970s in advanced industrial societies yet trade unions and unemployment are hardly mentioned in most theories of the politics of international trade the purpose of this paper is to develop a theoretical framework for understanding the importance of unemployment as a determinant of protectionist demands that is consistent with optimizing behavior on the part of union members and firms models of labor negotiations derived from cooperative bargaining theory are used to illustrate why the material benefits of protection received by union members and their employers in protected industries increase when union members are unemployed even when workers are risk neutral and capital is immobile

financial innovation new assets and the behavior of money demand abstract two fundamental changes in us banking regulations have affected the behavior of money demand m1 the first authorized checkable deposit accounts paying explicit interest rates the second allowed these rates to be market determined the theoretical literature does not directly address the impact of these events suggesting that they are primarily an empirical issue however the empirical literature has yet to agree on the impact of financial innovation on money demand for example several studies report an increase in the elasticity of money demand several others report a decline this paper uses a lancaster type choice model to analyze formally the expected impact of these two changes on the demand for money the model derives specific conditions under which i the demand for money increases as new assets are introduced and ii the impact of either the introduction of new assets or the elimination of interest rate restrictions on the elasticity of money demand

corporate tax holidays and investments governments of developing countries commonly adopt tax holidays to encourage investment this article evaluates the incentives provided by company income tax holidays and explains the importance of the timing of depreciation allowances in determining the effective tax rates and the cost of capital to firms considering additional investment during the holiday if an asset is long lived and depreciation allowances for tax purposes are accelerated the tax holiday by preventing depreciation deductions during the periods of peak profits may actually penalize a company for investing during the holiday the closer the investment to the end of the holiday period the more severe the penalty if instead depreciation allowances may be deferred until after the holiday this program of incentives is quite generous to the firm how these sharply contrasting results may emerge is illustrated through estimation of effective tax rates and user costs of capital under tax holiday systems in bangladesh cote d ivoire malaysia morocco and thailand

reassessing the government s discount rate policy in light of new theory and data in a world economy with a high degree of capital mobility abstract the paper reexamines the government s discount rate policy in the context of new evidence on international capital mobility the relationship between deficits and interest rates the relationship between consumer interest rates and the consumer s rate of time preference and intergenerational compensation it concludes that the approximate discount rate for government decisions will differ depending on the policy problem and that the government s borrowing rate is appropriate in some cases and in others the private rate should be used for long term policies the benefit cost rationale for discounting breaks down and must be reestablished on principles incorporating intergenerational equity

discount rates and shadow prices for public investment abstract this paper extends the harberger sandmo dreze model for public discount rates to a many good economy it derives a formula for discount rates which are specific to each public enterprise or agency and used by them to discount future outputs and inputs evaluated at market prices such an approach is shown to be more efficient than that of simply using a single rate for all public projects it is also more practical than asking each public firm to use second best shadow prices in their analyses of investment projects the general results are first provided then simple cases are considered and numerical examples presented to help interpret our formula and analyse its main determinants

marginal taxes and the asset portfolios of swedish households this paper focuses on the effects of marginal tax rates wealth income and a set of socioeconomic and demographic variables on the portfolio composition of households using detailed micro data on 2 000 swedish households in particular efforts are made to disentangle the effects of marginal tax rates on the portfolio behavior of households some econometric problems involved when estimating asset demand equations in the presence of incomplete portfolios are briefly discussed a final section examines the overall effect of marginal tax rates on asset demands by applying estimated discrete and continuous portfolio equations to compute different tax elasticities

the management of near money in the miller orr model is not optimal the most prominent model of the transactions demand for money that incorporates the availability of more than one interest bearing asset is that of miller and orr 1968 this three asset model is an extension of their simpler two asset money bonds model in which money is managed as an inventory with the objective of minimizing holding and transactions costs the extended model is used in graduatelevel textbooks to show that a corporate money manager facing an array of assets will behave much like the manager faced with a choice between money and only one type of security so that the simple model is an adequate basis for modeling the demand for money 1 in empirical work a similar belief is reflected in implementations of the transactions model of money demand that utilize a broad definition of money as though transactions motives will induce a money manager to handle a spectrum of near money assets in the same way as the medium of exchange the miller orr model appears to support such interpretations because in its three asset version the interrnediate interest bearing asset is managed in a fashion similar to that of non interest bearing money but when miller and orr solve this extended version of their model they neglect the corner solution that would allow the manager to hold only the highest yielding asset in this note i show that when the corner solution is

monetary policy lessons of recent inflation and disinflation by 1975 most economists agreed that the money demand function in the united states was reasonably stable and could serve as a reliable basis for the formulation of monetary policy those suspicious of monetarism were on the defensive in the light of the apparently inexorable increase of m1 velocity of about three percent per year with deviations of only a few tenths of a percent experience with rising money growth and rising inflation through 1980 only confirmed monetarist views as figure 1 shows all this had changed by 1986 with disinflation in the 1980s m1 velocity departed convincingly from its 1953 79 trend the money demand function seems to have fallen apart and is apparently not a reliable basis for monetary policy after all consequently the first major section following this introduction is devoted to the decline of velocity after 1981 and the demise of the standard money demand function some authors including i believe benjamin friedman conclude that this evidence leaves us so uncertain about the nature of money demand that policymakers cannot rely at all on any presumed money demand regularities in contrast my working hypothesis is that the money demand continues to be a stable function of relatively few variables but that the interest elasticity of money demand is substantially higher than previously thought others have sought money demand explanations in terms of regime shifts but that literature will not be discussed here events have not been kind to keynesian monetary policy positions either keynesians tend to concentrate on interest rates especially real interest rates as the best guide to the effects of monetary policy on the economy the real rate is discussed

the effectiveness of tax incentives for r d i in developing countries the case of argentina abstract there is increasing interest in developing countries in granting tax incentives in order to encourage private investment in research development and innovation r d i however evidence on the effectiveness of such schemes in achieving policy goals in weak innovation systems contexts is still very scarce this paper aims at narrowing this knowledge gap by focusing on the effects of a tax credit scheme for promoting firm level innovation investment in argentina the analysis applies dynamic panel data techniques to a novel dataset merging several waves of the national innovation survey collected by the national institute of statistics and censuses the results suggest that the elasticity of r d i investment to its user cost of capital is a greater than 1 in absolute terms which implies that the intervention has been effective in increasing firms innovation efforts however effects vary depending on the type of innovation investment being subsidized industrial sector and size of the firm moreover when innovation investment is divided into innovation related capital goods expenditures and only r d the results suggest that the absolute value of the elasticity for the r d component of the innovation investment is less than 1 these heterogeneous effects should be exploited for further policy design

modeling the banking firm a survey this paper reports on the status of the literature on micro bank modeling and assesses our understanding of the banking firm s optimal behavior this is no mean task for much has been written on banking broadly defined over the past couple of decades the review is developed in pieces each major subproblem is outlined and the analysis used to deal with the issue explicated this is not the best way to summarize the development of a field it should be immediately recognized one would prefer to have a smooth continuum of development moving the frontier of knowledge evenly through time and across subareas yet this is rarely the way a field develops more likely individual questions attract attention and are the subjects of a substantial number of contributions after a time the field moves on to the new area of interest the banking field is no exception before embarking upon the review however a couple of lines should be devoted to previous attempts there have been essentially three first pyle 1972 analyzes the uncertainty portfolio models at a time when little existed in the literature and hence one finds the review a bit vague and sketchy baltensperger s contributions 1978 1980 are the next serious and rather extensive reviews the quality of these

the ineffectiveness of effective tax rates on business investment a critique of feldstein s fisher schultz lecture abstract in his fisher schultz lecture martin feldstein 1982 examined the effects of non neutral tax rules on business investment by estimating three econometric models and he concluded that the rising rate of inflation has because of the structure of existing u s tax rules substantially discouraged investment in the past 15 years in a detailed examination of feldstein s effective tax rate model and a less extensive review of his other formulations neoclassical and return over cost we advance a number of important and independent criticisms and find that these three models fail to support feldstein s conclusion that taxes have exerted a significantly depressing effect on net investment during the recent inflation episode

internationally mobile firms and tax policy abstract this paper analyses how the government should tax internationally mobile firms the analysis finds that if tax authorities are unable to observe firms true mobility and domestic and foreign profitability are uncorrelated then 1 information rents are acquired by immobile inefficient firms and 2 the optimal policy will stimulate investment in the immobile sector compared to the complete information case another result of the paper is that the optimal allocation is implementable within the framework of a corporate income tax system where mobile firms self select more unfavourable capital allowances than immobile firms

do economic instruments matter wind turbine investments in the eu 15 abstract this paper analyses how governments in the eu 15 countries have succeeded in stimulating investments in wind turbines between 1985 and 2005 i use four different evaluation criteria tobin s q euler equation estimation investment accelerator model and the effective marginal tax rate to describe the observed investment patterns after a period of rapid growth in capital stock 1985 2000 a period of modest growth 2001 2005 can be observed even though the economic attractiveness of investing increases modestly this pattern cannot be explained by the evaluation criteria unless we accept economic attractiveness is a necessary condition and not a necessary and sufficient condition when analysing which policy has worked best the policies of germany denmark and spain stand out their early and consistent support has been based on feed in tariffs combined with subsidies

effective tax and subsidy rates on human capital in canada abstract effective tax and subsidy rates etrs and esrs on human capital investment via post secondary education are estimated for canada in the years 2000 and 2006 the flattening of the federal personal income tax structure in 2001 substantially reduced the tax disincentive for investment in human capital effective subsidy rates also declined as public spending did not keep pace with rising tuition fees the change on the tax side was strong enough to dominate the subsidy reduction according to our main results but disaggregation shows that this result did not hold in all cases results are shown for college master s and phd programs in addition to bachelor s degrees they are also broken down by gender and are shown for the 25th and 75th percentiles as well as the median provincial detail and 1997 results are provided in the case of bachelor s graduates

liquidity preference as behavior toward risk is a demand for short term securities not money in 1958 james tobin generalized the keynesian theory of liquidity preference by means of his famous portfolio model in which the demand for money narrowly defined is treated as behavior towards interest risk whatever merit this theory may have had then has long since been questionable the reason is the existence of a large set of substitutes for money typically short term money market instruments which can be regarded as riskless or virtually so and which pay substantial interest the availability of these instruments would appear to make tobin s theory that money is held to cope with interest risk resemble a scenario without a recognizable cast of actors in the literature on monetary theory other authors have also expressed misgivings about the tobin theory by noting that savings and nontransferable time deposits have the same risk properties as money but pay interest see for example robert barro and stanley fischer 1976 although correct the allusion to these deposits is simplistic it is true that while both types mimic money s freedom from interest risk in the conventional sense of capital loss time deposits are still exposed to a kind of interest risk because they can be liquidated before maturity only with interest penalty more important business firms are either denied access to savings deposits or as in the united states can hold a maximum of 150 000 per account at commercial banks thereby effectively eliminating large firms as holders furthermore although business firms can own most time deposits they typically do not except for negotiable cds a money market instrument they are loath to tie up funds in long term maturities and they can usually obtain the same or higher yields on other types of short term debt instruments that are also negotiable in the united states households have long accounted for about one third of demand deposits business firms owning most of the rest therefore any effort to rest a case against the tobin theory of money demand on the existence of savings and time deposits gets at only a small part of the problem this stricture extends to so called now and ats accounts these interest bearing demand deposits disguised under other names are also denied to business firms for them the short term instruments of the money market are the principal alternative to money in asset portfolios

the incentives to capital in the uk enterprise zones this paper provides a systematic assessment of the incentives to capital investment in uk enterprise zones it compares different investment projects between industrial sectors types of asset sources of finance and type of investor using the costs of capital methodology in addition micro economic and macro economic effects are compared as are ezs in round 1 and round 2 and the relative importance of capital allowances and property tax relief is considered the paper demonstrates that capital allowances are the more important incentive particularly in round 2 ezs the greatest incentives are to building assets for commerce financed by debt and tax exempt institution the greatest benefits offer an increase of between 7 6 and 8 7 in real rates of return on investments

effects of corporate tax reforms on smes investment decisions under the particular consideration of inflation corporate tax reforms carried out in eu countries since 1980 entail lower statutory tax rates and reductions in generous tax depreciation provisions several countries including the uk have reduced tax rates for small and medium sized enterprises smes this study compares incentive effects of such reforms on the smes investment decisions adopting a simple present value model ceteris paribus tax rates and depreciation rules vary in the model simulation while the application of historical cost accounting method in inflationary phases leads to fictitious increases in nominal net present value apart from the construction of international ranking country specific patterns of reform effects are also illustrated

new findings on firm investment and monetary transmission in the euro area in this paper we present comparable results on the determinants of firms investment and their link to monetary policy the results have been obtained by the eurosystem monetary transmission network this network has produced a series of papers in which the use of micro data permits estimating and quantifying the relevance of two channels of monetary policy transmission the interest rate and the broad credit channel the research findings provide evidence of an operative interest rate channel in all countries examined moreover the results indicate that variables which proxy firms financial conditions play a role firms characterised by weaker balance sheets show higher liquidity sensitivity

internationalization and changes in tax policy in oecd countries the importance of domestic veto players this article examines the role that economic and political factors played in tax reform in organization for economic cooperation and development oecd countries from 1986 to 1990 some writers argue that economic integration forced states to reform their tax systems the authors findings indicate that economic openness had an indirect effect on the level of change in marginal tax rates the institutional structure of a country was most important countries that had only one veto player or only one institution or party whose approval was necessary for a bill to become law enacted more sweeping reform than states that had more than one veto player these results suggest that even when international or domestic economic factors might dictate a change in policy reform will not be as sweeping in countries in which agreement among several institutions and or parties is necessary

testing for short termism in the uk stock market this paper uses data on the stock market valuations of a large sample of uk companies to assess if that market displays short termism tests are undertaken of whether discount rates implicit in market valuations applied to cash flows which accrue in the longer term are too high both absolutely and relative to the rates applied to cash flows in the near term i find prima facie evidence that these longer term discount rates are too high a result consistent with the existence of short termism an alternative interpretation of the results is that risk premia applied to expected cash flows systematically increase with the maturity of those flows whether this interpretation is consistent with asset pricing theories is questionable copyright 1993 by royal economic society

changing money financial innovation in developed countries preface contributors 1 financial innovations and monetary theory marcello de cecco university of siena and european university institute 2 financial change in the united states albert m wojnilower managing director and chief economist first boston corporation 3 the current status of the regulation of financial services and products in the united states developments and trends meyer eisenberg national center on financial services and professor of law berkeley 4 on the empirical detection of financial innovation donald d hester professor of economics university of wisconsin 5 measuring the opportunity for product innovation meghnad desai professor of economics lse and william low professor of economics lse and essex university 6 financial innovation in britain john h forsyth director morgan grenfell ltd 7 financial innovation in germany hermann josef dudler director deutsche bundesbank 8 financial innovation in italy a lop sided process c caranza and c cottarelli banca d italia 9 lessons from the french experience as compared with some other oecd countries christian de boissieu professor of economics university of paris i 10 financial innovation in japan its origins diffusions and impacts yoshio suzuki director institute for economics and marketing studies bank of japan 11 the private ecu market a case of international financial innovation enrico guglielmotto and giuseppe passatore instituto bancario san paolo di torino

taxation and inflation a new explanation for capital flows abstract in a world of mobile capital the current system of taxation implies that the after tax cost of capital and return to saving in each country are negatively correlated with the rate of inflation thus a country s net foreign asset position ought to be negatively correlated with its long run inflation rate the magnitude of these effects is shown to be potentially large for oecd countries cross section and time series regressions confirm that inflation rates are good predictors of net foreign assets the existing distribution of net foreign assets may therefore largely reflect tax distortions

what explains the lagged investment effect abstract the best predictor of current investment at the firm level is lagged investment this lagged investment effect is empirically more important than the cash flow and q effects combined we show that the specification of investment adjustment costs proposed by christiano et al 2005 predicts the presence of a lagged investment effect and that a generalized version of their model is consistent with the behavior of firm level data from compustat

structural dependence of the state on capital a central claim of both marxist and neoclassical political theory is that under capitalism all governments must respect and protect the essential claims of those who own the productive wealth of society this is the theory of structural dependence of the state on capital using a formal model the internal logic and the robustness of the theory is examined we conclude that in a static sense the theory is false virtually any distribution of consumption between wage earners and owners of capital is compatible with continual private investment once an appropriate set of taxes and transfers is in place yet the state may be structurally dependent in a dynamic sense policies that once in place redistribute income without reducing investment do reduce investment during the period in which they are anticipated but not yet implemented

local business taxes theory and practice local taxes which are borne by business are an aspect of local government revenue systems in almost all western countries these taxes cover a wide range of possible structures from the highly visible and direct such as taxes on business profits assets and wealth to the more indirect which bear on the inputs to a firm such as payroll property and resource rentals and severance taxes or taxes which bear on outputs such as sales taxes most local governments also employ in addition to taxes user fees and charges the range of local business tax is still further widened when we extend consideration beyond corporate business to include sole traders and partnerships in this case in addition to most of the above taxes we must also consider local taxes on personal income capital gains capital transfers and inheritance hence the range of taxes to be considered amongst local business taxes is both large and very complex

redistribution and education subsidies are siamese twins abstract we develop models of optimal linear and non linear income taxation with endogenous human capital formation to explore optimal education subsidies optimal subsidies on education ensure efficiency in human capital accumulation and thus play an important role in alleviating the tax distortions on learning induced by redistributive policies if the government cannot verify all investments in human capital education policy offsets some but not all tax induced distortions on learning non pecuniary educational costs benefits may increase decrease subsidies on education especially if they are complementary to work effort

measuring the cost of capital when taxes are changing with foresight abstract the familiar hall jorgenson 1967 cost of capital perturbation is not a uniquely feasible one because of institutional features of actual tax systems the optimal holding time for an incremental unit of capital will generally be infinite the impossibility of an optimal rule for recapturing excess depreciation allowances on disposal is demonstrated when tax changes are foreseen the error in the traditional measure of cost of capital can become highly significant ignorance of this effect led to underestimates of the extent to which the radical changes to the u k corporation tax in 1984 would affect cost of capital and incentives to forestall planned investment

market interest rates and commercial bank profitability an empirical investigation the widespread notion that commercial banks borrow short and lend long implies that sharp market interest rate increases may induce a significant number of banking failures this paper develops a method for estimating average asset and liability maturities for a sample of large money center banks regression models are tested to determine if market rate fluctuations have a significant impact on bank profitability the conclusion is negative large banks have effectively hedged themselves against market rate risk by assembling asset and liability portfolios with similar average maturities the impact of market interest rates on commercial bank revenues costs and profitability has increasingly concerned economists and policymakers as financial market conditions have become more volatile in recent years the widespread notion that depository intermediaries borrow short and lend long implies that rapid market rate increases may induce an unacceptable number of financial firm failures monetary policy discussions have reflected this concern for many years the federal reserve board considered stable market rates a goal or at least an intermediate target of monetary policy the extent to which money market conditions are permitted to fluctuate in the short run is also affected by the unique role of the federal reserve system as the nation s lender of last resort liquidity pressures ultimately devolve on the money market and the federal reserve has a responsibility for maintaining orderly conditions in that market

consumer theory and the demand for money the following sections are included introductionthe definition of moneythe microeconomic theory of a monetary economythe aggregation theoretic approach to money demandindex number theorythe links between aggregation theory index number theory and monetary theoryunderstanding the new divisia aggregatesthe optimal level of monetary subaggregationeconometric considerationsapproximating the monetary services subutility functionan exampleempirical dimensionsempirical comparisons of index numbersempirical results for the demand system approachextensionsconclusions this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

an operational measure of liquidity embedding the process of selling an asset in a search environment enables one to provide an exact definition of liquidity an asset s liquidity is the expected time until it is sold while pursuing an optimal in the sense of maximization of expected discounted net proceeds policy this analysis reveals that this definition is compatible with most other notions of liquidity and in particular with those of john maynard keynes impatience the discount associatedwith a quick sale predictability and flexibility copyright 1986 by american economic association