estimating the tax advantage of corporate debt this paper presents estimates of the effective tax value of incremental interest deductions for corporations taking into account that they may not be able to utilize all their interest deductions fully because of either insufficient taxable income or the availability of nondebt tax shields after describing particular features of the tax code which may drive a wedge between statutory and effective tax rates for debt finance we present estimates using the treasury corporate tax model of effective tax rates for a variety of industry groupings our estimates suggest that the after tax cost of debt varies widely across industries the magnitude of the effective tax advantage to debt finance has important implications for corporate financial behavior one issue which has been examined extensively in the corporate finance literature is whether the value of the firm is affected by the firm s leverage ratio in a recent contribution deangelo and masulis 3 have shown that financing decisions can affect the value of the firm if the effective tax advantage to debt finance varies among firms or is reduced by the presence of nondebt tax shields such as investment tax credits and depreciation deductions the effective tax advantage to debt is also an important determinant of leverage related costs gordon and malkiel 5 have recently used the statutory tax rate to estimate expected bankruptcy costs induced by the corporate tax when the firm is assumed to balance the marginal tax advantage to debt with marginal expected bankruptcy costs if however the effective tax rate for interest deductions falls short of the statutory rate the magnitude of these costs may be overstated this paper presents detailed estimates of the marginal effective tax advantage to debt finance our estimates based on data in the treasury 1978 corporate master statistical file and on simulations done with the treasury corporate tax model quantify the impact of increasing interest deductions without changing other items on the corporation s income statement 1 we simulate the impact of a change in a firm s capital structure holding its investment and production decisions constant this is an appropriate procedure for estimating the marginal

debt leases taxes and the endogeneity of corporate tax status we provide evidence that corporate tax status is endogenous to financing decisions which induces a spurious relation between measures of financial policy and many commonly used tax proxies using a forward looking estimate of before financing corporate marginal tax rates we document a negative relation between operating leases and tax rates and a positive relation between debt levels and tax rates this is the first unambiguous evidence supporting the hypothesis that low tax rate firms lease more and have lower debt levels than high tax rate firms many theories of capital structure imply that all else equal the incentive to use debt financing increases with a firm s marginal tax rate due to the tax deductibility of interest expense e g modigliani and miller 1963 deangelo and masulis 1980 conversely leasing models generally predict that firms with low marginal tax rates employ relatively more leases than do firms with high marginal tax rates the logic behind the leasinlg prediction is that leases allow for the transfer of tax shields from firms that cannot fully utilize the associated tax deduction lessees to firms that can lessors e g myers dill and bautista 1976 smith and wakeman 1985 ross westerfield and jaffe 1996 despite these straightforward predictions empirically testing for tax effects is difficult because a spurious relation exists between the financing decision and many commonly used tax proxies specifically both interest expense and lease payments are tax deductible thus a firm that finances its operations with debt or leases reduces its taxable income potentially lowering its expected marginal tax rate if not properly addressed this endogeneity of the tax rate can bias an experiment in favor of finding a negative

presidential address collateral and commitment optimal dynamic capital structure choice is fundamentally a problem of commitment in a standard trade off setting with shareholder debtholder agency conflicts full commitment counterfactually predicts the firm would rely almost exclusively on debt financing conversely absent commitment a modigliani miller like value irrelevance and policy indeterminacy result holds thus the content of dynamic trade off theory must depend on the commitment technology in this context collateral is valuable as a low cost commitment device because ex ante optimal commitments are likely to be suboptimal ex post observed capital structure dynamics will exhibit hysteresis and depart significantly from standard predictions

tax and regulatory motivations for issuing non voting non convertible preferred stock this paper extends prior studies that attempt to explain the existence of unique securities particularly engel erickson and maydew 1999 by investigating why firms issue non voting non convertible preferred stock ps instead of other securities we find that the choice of ps is influenced by tax and regulatory changes imposed by the tax reform act of 1986 tra86 and the 1989 basle banking accord as well as various firm specific incentives we find that industrials issue ps to preserve tax attributes by avoiding an ownership change and to maximize foreign tax credit utilization in addition we find that the regulatory requirements of the basle accord influence the choice by banks to issue ps finally we show that although firms could have issued alternative securities that would have allowed them to achieve the same tax or regulatory goals firm specific factors limit their ability to do so for example firms can also avoid triggering an ownership change by issuing straight debt however financial distress considerations may constrain their ability to issue additional debt therefore we demonstrate that the final choice of ps is influenced by a combination of tax regulatory and firm specific incentives

foreign direct investment mode choice entry and establishment modes in transition economies in this study we bridge two streams of foreign direct investment literature specifically studies on establishment mode choice i e the choice between an acquisition and a greenfield establishment and studies on entry mode choice i e the choice between a wholly owned outlet and a subsidiary with shared ownership we arrive at a conceptual synthesis for an examination of the effects of the same predictors on the dual entry establishment mode choice made in the context of a single foreign investment we demonstrate that a parent firm s technological intensity international strategy and experience determine both establishment and entry mode choices moreover we apply williamson s new institutional economics to investigate the influence of institution building on multinational enterprises dual investment choice in the context of transition economies we test empirically the possible moderating effect of a host country s institutional environment we conclude that the degree of the host country s institutional advancement moderates the effect of both technological intensity and international strategy on the establishment and entry mode choice

strategic considerations the pecking order hypothesis and market reactions to equity financing myers and majluf 1984 showed that in a world of asymmetric information managers of overvalued firms issue equity while managers of undervalued firms use cash if available this paper shows that in a multiperiod world managers of undervalued firms may find it optimal to issue stock even though cash is available consequently the market does not interpret all announcements of equity issues as signals of firm overvaluation the paper also generates predictions regarding the effect of information asymmetry and investment oppor tunities on i dividend policy and ii the cross sectional distribution of market reactions when an equity issue is announced

the effect of business risk on corporate capital structure theory and evidence under corporate and personal taxation we demonstrate that the relation between optimal debt level and business risk is roughly u shaped this result follows from the fact that the tax liability is an option portfolio that is long in the corporate tax option and short in the personal tax option therefore the net effect of a change in business risk on the optimal debt level depends upon the relative magnitudes of the resultant marginal changes in the values of these two options results of empirical tests offer support for the predicted u shaped relationship

early and late calls of convertible bonds theory and evidence many convertible bonds are called too early or too late relative to the perfect markets decision rule of ingersoll 1977a and ingersoll 1977b we re examine the convertible call decision under corporate taxation and possible default prior to maturity our model predicts that early calls will be associated with high coupon and low call premium dividend income volatility tax rate and interest rate and late calls will be associated with high call premium dividend income tax rate and interest rate and low coupon and volatility these implications are supported by empirical tests carried out with five years of convertible call data

the significance of tax law asymmetries an empirical investigation this study uses tax return data for u s nonfinancial corporations for the period 1971 1982 to estimate the importance of restrictions on the ability of firms to use tax credits and to obtain refunds for tax losses our results suggest that the incidence of such unused tax benefits increased substantially during the early 1980s though we do not find these increases attributable to increased investment incentives during that period we present estimates of the marginal tax rate on interest payments which take into account unused tax benefits and emphasize the importance of distinguishing current tax payments from marginal tax rates in estimating the incentive to invest

trade credit and taxes abstract this paper analyzes the extent to which tax differences affect the use of trade credit u s owned affiliates in low tax countries use trade credit to lend whereas those in high tax countries use trade credit to borrow 10 lower local tax rates are associated with net trade credit positions that are 1 4 higher as a fraction of sales the use of trade credit to get capital out of low tax low return environments is also illustrated by the temporary repatriation tax holiday in 2005 which was used most intensively by affiliates with positive net trade credit positions

institutional determinants of capital structure adjustment speeds abstract many authors relate a firm s performance to legal and political features and the regulatory environment in which it operates this article compares firms capital structure adjustments across countries and investigates whether institutional differences help explain the variance in estimated adjustment speeds we find that legal and financial traditions significantly correlate with firm adjustment speeds more narrowly institutional features also relate to adjustment speeds consistent with the hypothesis that better institutions lower the transaction costs associated with adjusting a firm s leverage such associations between institutional arrangements and leverage adjustment speeds are consistent with the dynamic trade off theory of capital structure choice

the debt equity choice when firms adjust their capital structures they tend to move toward a target debt ratio that is consistent with theories based on tradeoffs between the costs and benefits of debt in contrast to previous empirical work out tests explicitly account for the fact that firms may face impediments to movements toward their target ratio and that the target ratio may change over time as the firm s profitability and stock price change a separate analysis of the size of the issue and repurchase transactions suggests that the deviation between the actual and the target ratios plays a more important role in the repurchase decision than in the issuance decision

depreciation policy changes tax earnings management and investment opportunity incentives abstract contrary to previous studies we find managers change depreciation policies in predictable ways we identify three dimensions of depreciation policy changes whether it is a method change or an estimate revision whether it is income increasing or decreasing and whether it applies to new assets only or both new and existing assets this disaggregation leads to three findings first a 1981 tax law altered the frequency of estimate revisions and method changes second firms adopting income increasing method changes for all assets experience worse performance than those adopting such changes only for new assets finally non income increasing policy changes are associated with changes in investment opportunities

are observed capital structures determined by equity market timing contrary to baker and wurgler 2002 i find that the importance of historical average market to book ratios in leverage regressions is not due to past equity market timing al though equity transactions may be timed to equity market conditions they do not have sig nificant long lasting effects on capital structure debt transactions exhibit timing patterns that are unlikely to induce a negative relation between market to book ratios and leverage i also find that historical average market to book ratios have significant effects on current financing and investment decisions implying that they contain information about growth opportunities not captured by current market to book ratios

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 role of debt and perferred stock as a solution to adverse investment incentives we analyze the optimal mix of debt common equity and preferred equity in a model with an investment opportunity and asymmetric information about its quality and show that an all equity financed firm will overinvest issuing the appropriate amount of debt before the project becomes available resolves this overinvestment problem introducing a second motive for debt such as taxes leads to a role for preferred stock as a means of enhancing the firm s debt capacity by creating additional incentives to invest we derive an opti mal capital structure involving debt preferred stock and common stock this paper examines the ifnpact of a firm s capital structure on its subsequent investment decisions we assume that a firm s equityholders receive private information about the quality of a project that must be funded externally before the project becomes available and before the information asymmetry exists however the equityholders can choose a capital structure from among debt preferred stock and common stock we show that a subsequent informational asymmetry about project quality induces fully equity financed firms to overin vest that is to accept some negative net present value investments this overin vestment will be reflected in security values prior to the investment we then demonstrate that an appropriate initial debt issue eliminates this suboptimal in vestment behavior and results in an optimal initial debt equity ratio not based upon taxes bankruptcy costs or other exogenous factors we then allow for a corporate tax advantage to debt that leads the firm to issue additional debt however the additional debt creates an underinvestment problem we demonstrate that preferred stock has features that generate incen tives for equityholders to invest and so preferred stock enhances the firm s debt capacity i e the firm can issue more debt in conjunction with preferred stock without creating an underinvestment problem

hedging financing and investment decisions theory and empirical tests abstract in this paper we theoretically and empirically examine the interaction between hedging financing and investment decisions a simple equilibrium model with costly financial distress suggests that as firms become more efficient at risky investments vis a vis low risk investments they will borrow less invest more in risky assets and hedge more the model also predicts a positive relationship between hedging and leverage a result consistent with debt capacity arguments we test the model empirically using a simultaneous equations framework to investigate the determinants of firm level hedging financing and investing decisions the results strongly support the hypothesis that the hedging financing and investment decisions are jointly determined in addition we find strong support for the central hypothesis that firms more efficient investing in risky technologies more aggressively hedge and use less debt financing in order to maximize their comparative advantage

resistance to reform status quo bias in the presence of individual specific uncertainty comment why do governments so often fail to adopt policies which economists consider to be efficiency enhancing our answer to this question relies on uncertainty regarding the distribution of gains and losses from reform we show that there is a bias towards the status quo and hence against efficiency enhancing reforms whenever some of the individual gainers and losers from reform cannot be identified beforehand there are reforms which once adopted will receive adequate political support but would have failed to carry the day ex ante the argument does not rely on risk aversion irrationality or hysteresis due to sunk costs jel d72 f13 why do governments so often fail to adopt policies that economists consider to be efficiency enhancing this is one of the fundamental questions of political economy the answer usually relies on what may be

the effect of capital structure on a firm s liquidation decision abstract a firm s liquidation can impose costs on its customers workers and suppliers an agency relationship between these individuals and the firm exists in that the liquidation decision controlled by the firm as the agent affects other individuals the customers workers and suppliers as principals the analysis in this paper suggests that capital structure can control the incentive conflict problem of this relationship by serving as a pre positioning or bonding mechanism appropriate selection of capital structure assures that incentives are aligned so that the firm implements the ex ante value maximizing liquidation policy

sins of omission and the practice of economics this paper advances the proposition that economics as a discipline gives rewards that favor the hard and disfavor the soft such bias leads economic research to ignore important topics and problems that are difficult to approach in a hard way thereby resulting in sins of omission this paper argues for reexamination of current institutions for publication and promotion in economics as it also argues for greatly increased tolerance in norms for publication and promotion as one way of alleviating narrow methodological biases

debt and the marginal tax rate abstract do taxes affect corporate debt policy this paper tests whether the incremental use of debt is positively related to simulated firm specific marginal tax rates that account for net operating losses investment tax credits and the alternative minimum tax the simulated marginal tax rates exhibit substantial variation due to the dynamics of the tax code tax regime shifts business cycle effects and the progressive nature of the statutory tax schedule using annual data from more than 10 000 firms for the years 1980 1992 i provide evidence which indicates that high tax rate firms issue more debt than their low tax rate counterparts

capital structure and interaction among firms in output markets theory and evidence i develop a simple model that examines the relations between the extent of competitive interaction among firms in output markets their capital structures and the aggressiveness of their operating strategies a firm s optimal leverage is related to the degree to which its operating strategy affects its rivals value functions and resulting optimal output market choices this relation is positive regardless of whether the competition in output markets is in strategic substitutes or in strategic complements i test the model s prediction using two proxies for the extent of competitive interaction among firms the empirical evidence provides support for the model

the response of deferred executive compensation to changes in tax rates abstract given the increasing use of stock options in executive compensation we examine how taxes influence the choice of compensation and document that income deferral is an important margin of adjustment in response to tax rate changes to account for this option in the empirical analysis we explore deferral by estimating how executives choice of compensation between current and deferred income depends on changes in tax policy our empirical results suggest a significant impact of taxes on the composition of executive compensation

on the existence of an optimal capital structure theory and evidence one of the most contentious issues in the theory of finance during the past quarter century has been the theory of capital structure the geneses of this controversy were the seminal contributions by modigliani and miller 18 19 the general academic view by the mid 1970s although not a consensus was that the optimal capital structure involves balancing the tax advantage of debt against the present value of bankruptcy costs no sooner did this general view become prevalent in the profession than miller 16 presented a new challenge by showing that under certain conditions the tax advantage of debt financing at the firm level is exactly offset by the tax disadvantage of debt at the personal level since then there has developed a burgeoning theoretical literature attempting to reconcile miller s model with the balancing theory of optimal capital structure e g deangelo and masulis 5 kim 12 and modigliani 17 the general result of this work is that if there are significant leverage related costs such as bankruptcy costs agency costs of debt and loss of non debt tax shields and if the income from equity is untaxed then the marginal bondholder s tax rate will be less than the corporate rate and there will be a positive net tax advantage to corporate debt financing the firm s optimal capital structure will involve the trade off between the tax advantage of debt and various leverage related costs the upshot of these extensions of miller s model is the recognition that the existence of an optimal capital structure is essentially an empirical issue as to whether or not the various leverage related costs are economically significant enough to influence the costs of corporate borrowing the miller model and its theoretical extensions have inspired several timeseries studies which provide evidence on the existence of leverage related costs trczinka 28 reports that from examining differences in average yields between taxable corporate bonds and tax exempt municipal bonds one cannot reject the miller hypothesis that the marginal bondholder s tax rate is not different from the corporate tax rate however trczinka is careful to point out that this finding does not necessarily imply that there is no tax advantage of corporate debt if the personal tax rate on equity is positive indeed buser and hess 1 using a longer time series of data and more sophisticated econometric techniques estimate that the average effective personal tax rate on equity is statistically positive and is not of a trivial magnitude more importantly they document evidence that is consistent with the existence of significant leverage related costs in the economy

do personal taxes affect capital structure evidence from the 2003 tax cut abstract because the personal tax treatments of interest and dividend income likely affect the relative cost of debt and equity financing a sharp change in tax treatment could affect firms optimal leverage this paper examines the effect of the 2003 equity income tax cut on firms debt usage because this tax cut affected only individual investors we can use a difference in differences method to identify the effect of personal tax on firms leverage previous research has found that the 2003 tax cut encouraged dividend payouts and reduced the cost of equity but it provides no link to equilibrium leverage ratios we estimate that the tax cut causes the affected firms leverage to decrease by about 5 percentage points furthermore we show that the effects of the tax cut are stronger for firms with lower marginal corporate tax rates and for firms that are not financially constrained consistent with our theoretical predictions overall we find strong evidence that personal tax is an important determinant of firms optimal leverage

own company stock in defined contribution pension plans a takeover defense abstract if managers induce employees to hold company stock in defined contribution pension plans as a form of takeover defense then changes in state laws that enhance managerial protection should lead to a reduction in employer stock in 401 k plans delaware s mid 1990s validation of the poison pill in conjunction with a staggered board was followed by a significant decline in employee ownership within defined contribution plans for firms incorporated in delaware evidence using governance data suggests that this is due to responses of firms with staggered boards binary choice models confirm that employee ownership in defined contribution plans lowers takeover probabilities

costly distortion of information in agency problems anecdotal evidence suggests that agents often spend resources distorting information transmitted to principals we present a model where costly information distortion emerges as equilibrium behavior the information structure we focus on is intermediate between and encompasses the cases of private information and public information the agent can falsify the privately observed state at some cost although the principal can design contracts that induce no falsification these may involve excessive iinformation rents falsification can be beneficial in spite of the waste of resources involved because it helps reduce information rents we examine how optimal contract and equilibrium payoffs change as the information structure ranges from private to public information

have the tax benefits of debt been overestimated abstract we re examine the claim that many corporations are underleveraged in that they fail to take full advantage of debt tax shields we show prior results suggesting underleverage stems from biased estimates of tax benefits from interest deductions we develop improved estimates of marginal tax rates using a non parametric procedure that produces more accurate estimates of the distribution of future taxable income we show that additional debt would provide firms with much smaller tax benefits than previously thought and when expected distress costs and difficult to measure non debt tax shields are also considered it appears plausible that most firms have tax efficient capital structures

reinsurance and corporate taxation in the united kingdom life insurance industry there are two main tax related arguments regarding the use of reinsurance the income volatility reduction and the income level enhancement arguments the income volatility reduction argument contends that firms facing convex tax schedules have incentives to hedge in order to reduce the volatility of their annual taxable income and thereby lower expected tax liabilities smith c w stulz r m 1985 optimal hedging policies journal of financial and quantitative analysis 19 127 140 the income level enhancement argument advanced by adiel adiel r 1996 reinsurance and the management of regulatory ratios and taxes in the property casualty insurance industry journal of accounting and economics 22 207 240 is more specific to hedging via reinsurance this perspective holds that reinsurance enhances current reported earnings via the receipt of reinsurance commissions and so increases tax liabilities consequently insurance firms with high marginal tax rates should use less reinsurance than those with low marginal tax rates if tax matters prior studies using data on financial derivatives have produced mixed results on the validity of the first argument while adiel 1996 finds the second argument insignificant in his study of the use of reinsurance by a sample of united states us property liability insurance firms this study tests the two tax related arguments using 1992 2001 data for a sample of united kingdom uk life insurance firms we find that uk life insurers with low before planning marginal tax rates tend to use more reinsurance in contrast tax convexity is found to have no significant impact on the purchase of reinsurance and so the volatility reduction argument is not supported

taxes and leverage at multinational corporations abstract empirical research has struggled to show that variation in corporate capital structure arises from variation in estimated corporate income tax rates we argue that in previous studies both the tax rates applied to multinational corporations and the taxable income earned have been mismeasured using the bureau of economic analysis annual survey sample combined with each firm s income and country specific tax rate we find that firms do have higher leverage ratios and lower interest coverage ratios when they operate in countries with higher tax rates as theory would suggest the trade off theory of capital structure continues to have empirical support

u s worldwide taxation and domestic mergers and acquisitions a discussion abstract harris and o brien 2018 investigate whether u s tax policy distorts u s multinationals mncs investment they find that mncs facing higher repatriation tax costs engage in fewer domestic acquisitions the study re examines the results in two prior studies that found no effect hanlon et al 2015 and a positive effect martin et al 2015 by introducing a new proxy for repatriation tax costs a binary variable for whether the mnc uses the double irish structure we critique the theory underlying the prediction as well as the proxy we conclude that caution should be exercised in taking the results at face value

cross jurisdictional income shifting by u s multinationals evidence from international bond offerings we examine whether tax incentives influence where u s multinationals locate their interest deductions worldwide our sample includes international bond offerings by u s multinationals during 1987 1997 denominated in the currencies of australia canada france germany italy japan or the united kingdom our results suggest that u s multinationals debt location decisions take into account the effect of jurisdiction specific tax loss carryforwards and binding foreign tax credit limitations on the value of debt tax shields our results are also consistent with u s multinationals locating interest deductions in different tax jurisdictions as a mechanism to achieve tax motivated income shifting

the role of target leverage in security issues and repurchases the paper examines whether security issues and repurchases adjust the capital structure toward the target the time series patterns of debt ratios imply that only debt reductions are initiated to offset the accumulated deviation from target leverage the importance of target leverage in earlier debt equity choice studies is driven by the subsample of equity issues accompanied by debt reductions unlike debt issues and reductions equity issues and repurchases have no significant lasting effect on capital structure therefore even firms that have target debt ratios can engage in timing the equity market

the trade off model with mean reverting earnings theory and empirical tests the trade off theory of capital structure predicts a positive relationship between earnings and leverage contradictory to well established empirical evidence since corporate earnings are known to be mean reverting we reformulate the trade off model with mean reverting earnings we show that with mean reverting earnings there should be a negative relationship between optimal leverage and the current earnings level the model also illustrates the importance of the earnings reversion parameter in the determination of capital structure the major implications of the model are supported by empirical tests carried out with a sample of firms in the s p 500 index

post the washington consensus economic governance and industrial strategies for the twenty first century recent events in the global economy have led to a growing dissatisfaction with the neo liberal economic paradigm that has dominated economic policy over the last 30 years and the increasing concentration of and abuse of economic power within the corporate sector that has ensued however amidst calls for a new approach to economic management there is a danger that a new policy framework may overlook underlying economic governance structures that exist and may evolve within the economy such oversight has implications for development this paper seeks to demonstrate that the long run efficacy of industrial strategy depends upon designing appropriate economic governance structures that serve the wider public interest it does so by exploring past experiences of industrial strategy drawing lessons from the usa the uk japan the third italy and the emerging and transition economies we also offer some suggestions for ways forward

social capital and the cost of equity abstract we find that a firm s cost of equity is inversely related to the level of social capital in the state where the firm is headquartered further the cost of equity declines when firms move their headquarters from a low social capital state to a state with higher social capital the negative relation between social capital and the cost of equity is statistically significant only for firms facing relatively low levels of product market competition and is not significant for firms with good firm specific reputations we interpret these findings as indicating that social capital serves as a societal monitoring mechanism and can be value enhancing for firms that are perceived as having greater agency problems and face weak product market monitoring

human capital capital structure and employee pay an empirical analysis abstract we test the predictions of titman 1984 and berk stanton and zechner 2010 by examining the effect of leverage on labor costs leverage has a significantly positive impact on cash equity based and total compensation of chief executive officers ceos compensation of new ceos hired from outside the firm is positively related to prior year firm leverage in addition leverage has a positive and significant impact on average employee pay the incremental total labor expenses associated with an increase in leverage are large enough to offset the incremental tax benefits of debt the empirical evidence supports the theoretical prediction that labor costs limit the use of debt

empirical tax research in accounting this paper traces the development of archival microeconomic based empirical income tax research in accounting over the last 15 years the paper details three major areas of research i the coordination of tax and non tax factors ii the effects of taxes on asset prices and iii the taxation of multijurisdictional international and interstate commerce methodological concerns of particular interest to this field also are discussed the paper concludes with a discussion of possible directions for future research r 2001 elsevier science b v all rights reserved jel classification m41 h25 k34 g32 f23

foreign tax credit limitations and capital structure decisions this paper extends prior studies by collins and shackelford 1992 and froot and hines 1995 that investigate the impact of foreign tax credit ftc limitations on firms capital structure decisions binding ftc limitations reduce the marginal tax benefit of domestic interest deductions and provide incentives for firms to substitute equity financing for domestic debt collins and shackelford 1992 document a positive relation between the impact of ftc limitations and changes in firms preferred stock accounts during 1986 89 froot and hines 1995 unable to isolate domestic debt changes document that firms with excess ftcs decreased their worldwide debt growth in 1986 91 but they do not find evidence that ftc limitations influence a shift away from debt and into preferred stock financing thus these two studies find conflicting evidence regarding whether ftc limitations influence firms to use preferred stock as a financing vehicle and neither study provides direct evidence regarding a decline in domestic debt or a potential common

taxes and capital structure evidence from firms response to the tax reform act of 1986 while the theoretical relation between taxes and capital structure has been extensively analyzed the empirical evidence on this issue has thus far been inconclusive one of the main difficulties confronting previous empirical studies of the cross sectional relationship between taxes and leverage was the control of intervening variables the tax reform act of 1986 tra which drastically changed the tax regime provides a unique opportunity to assess the interaction between taxes and leverage decisions in a controlled environment the authors test the relationship between leverage and certain tax related variables for a large sample of companies in the years surrounding the enactment of tra the results support the tax based theories of capital structure the findings indicate that there exists a substitution effect between debt and nondebt tax shields and that both corporate and personal tax rates affect leverage decisions coauthors are dan givoly aharon r ofer and oded sarig article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

pecking order or trade off hypothesis evidence on the capital structure of chinese companies this study tests the pecking order and trade off hypotheses of corporate financing decisions using a cross section of the largest chinese listed companies the study is built on allen 1993 baskin 1989 and adedeji 1998 to set up three models in which trade off and pecking order theories give distinctively different predictions 1 the determinants of leverage 2 the relationship between leverage and dividends and 3 the determinants of corporate investment in model 1 a significant negative correlation is found between leverage and profitability in model 2 a significant positive correlation between current leverage and past dividends is found these results broadly support the pecking order hypothesis over trade off theory however model 3 is inconclusive overall the results provide tentative support for the pecking order hypothesis and demonstrate that a conventional model of corporate capital structure can explain the financing behaviour of chinese companies

earnings management through transaction structuring contingent convertible debt and diluted earnings per share in this article we examine whether firms structure their convertible bond transactions to manage diluted earnings per share eps we find that the likelihood of firms issuing contingent convertible bonds cocos which are often excluded from diluted eps calculations under statement of financial accounting standard sfas 128 is significantly associated with the reduction that would occur in diluted eps if the bonds were traditionally structured we also document that firms use of eps based compensation contracts significantly affects the likelihood of coco issuance and find weak evidence that reputation costs measured using earnings restatement data play a role in the structuring decision these results are robust to controlling for alternative motivations for issuing cocos including tax and dilution arguments in addition an examination of announcement returns reveals that investors view the net benefits and costs of cocos as offsetting one another our results contribute to the literature on earnings management diluted eps financial reporting costs and financial innovation

proxies for the corporate marginal tax rate abstract this paper focuses on how best to measure the corporate marginal tax rate which is an important input into financial analysis of the cost of capital financing policy corporate hedging and corporate reorganizations the results indicate that the simulated tax rate used by shevlin 1990 and graham 1996 although difficult to calculate is the best available proxy for the true marginal tax rate if the simulated rate is unavailable an easy to calculate trichotomous variable or the statutory marginal tax rate which captures the progressivity in the tax schedule are reasonable alternatives better than most commonly used tax variables

tax planning regulatory capital planning and financial reporting strategy for commercial banks we test whether banks investment and financing policies can be explained by tax status we document changes in bank holdings of municipal bonds in response to changes in tax rules relating to deductibility of interest expense we also document an association between banks marginal tax rates and their investment and financing decisions which is consistent with the existence of tax clienteles however banks do not sort themselves perfectly into investment and financing clienteles because of adjustment costs we posit specific types of transaction cost impediments to tax planning and document that banks apparently trade off these costs against tax planning benefits article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

why is the corporate tax rate lower than the personal tax rate in many oecd countries statutory corporate tax rates are lower than personal income tax rates this tax rate difference is often particularly large for small firms the present paper argues that a reduction of the corporate tax rate below the personal tax rate is an optimal tax policy if there are problems of asymmetric information between investors and firms in the capital market the reduction of the corporate tax rate below the personal tax rate encourages equity financing and thus mitigates the excessive use of debt financing induced by asymmetric information our main theoretical result stands in marked contrast to the traditional view of corporate taxation and corporate finance theory according to which there is a tax disadvantage to equity financing more recent empirical evidence on this issue however is in line with our result

taxes and firm size abstract firm size has been used as a proxy for the firm s political costs and hence managers proclivity to choose income reducing accounting procedures this study provides additional evidence on this topic by examining the association between firm size and effective corporate tax rates the latter are one component of a firm s political costs the roughly fifty largest u s exchange listed firms in particular oil and gas companies and manufacturing firms have significantly higher worldwide tax rates than other firms these higher tax rates are observed primarily after the implementation of the u s 1969 tax reform act and after the opec countries raised their tax rates on u s oil producers the findings which are insensitive to alternative sources of data alternative measures of firm size and alternative measures of effective tax rates are consistent with the use in previous studies of firm size as a proxy for the firm s political costs

growth in transition what we know what we don t and what we should abstract this essay surveys macroeconomic issues that marked the transition from planned to market economy in central and eastern european and former soviet union countries we first establish stylized facts of the transition so far we then critically survey the theoretical literature on transition discussing explanations for the initial output fall and mediumterm issues such as optimal speed of transition disorganization institutions and sectoral reallocation as source of output dynamics we review the empirical literature to assess how well it translates the theoretical models and explains the stylized facts we conclude with suggestions for future research

corporate tax incentives and capital structure new evidence from uk firm level tax returns abstract we investigate how companies capital structure is affected by corporate income taxes using confidential company level tax returns for a large sample of uk firms exploiting variation in companies marginal tax rates we find a positive and substantial long run tax effect on leverage leverage responds more to decreases in the marginal tax rate and it responds to changes in the marginal rather than the average tax rate most importantly we find that the marginal tax rate based on tax returns has greater explanatory power for companies leverage than the marginal tax rate based on financial statements our study suggests that errors in the measurement for tax incentives using financial statements could lead to underestimation of the tax effects on capital structure

optimal lending contracts and firm dynamics we develop a general model of lending in the presence of endogenous borrowing constraints borrowing constraints arise because borrowers face limited liability and debt repayment cannot be perfectly enforced in the model the dynamics of debt are closely linked with the dynamics of borrowing constraints in fact borrowing constraints must satisfy a dynamic consistency requirement the value of outstanding debt restricts current access to short term capital but is itself determined by future access to credit this dynamic consistency is not guaranteed in models of exogenous borrowing constraints where the ability to raise short term capital is limited by some prespecified function of debt we characterize the optimal default free contract which minimizes borrowing constraints at all histories and derive implications for firm growth survival leverage and debt maturity the model is qualitatively consistent with stylized facts on the growth and survival of firms comparative statics with respect to technology and default constraints are derived borrowing constraints are an important determinant of firm growth and survival 1 such constraints may arise in connection to the financing of investment opportunities faced by firms or temporary liquidity needs such as those required to survive a recession this paper develops a theory of endogenous borrowing constraints and studies its implications for firm dynamics in our model debt is constrained by the firm s limited liability and option to default a lending contract specifies an initial loan size future financing and a repayment schedule the choice of these variables in turn determines future growth the firm s future borrowing capacity and its ability and willingness to repay hence borrowing constraints and firm dynamics are jointly determined we study this dynamic design problem our model builds on thomas and worral s 1994 model of foreign direct investment at time zero a risk neutral borrower firm or entrepreneur has a project which requires a fixed initial set up cost every period the project yields revenues that increase with the amount of 1 there is considerable evidence suggesting that financing constraints are important determinants of firm dynamics gertler and gilchrist 1994 argue that liquidity constraints may explain why small manufacturing firms respond more to a tightening of monetary policy than do larger manufacturing firms perez quiros and timmermann 2000 show that in recessions smaller firms are more sensitive to the worsening of credit market conditions as measured by higher interest rates and default premia evans and jovanovic 1989 show that the liquidity constraints are essential in the decision to become an entrepreneur fazzari hubbard and petersen 1988 among others view financial constraints as an explanation for the dynamic behaviour of aggregate investment and cabral and mata 1996 are able to fit reasonably well the size distribution of portuguese manufacturing firms by estimating a simple model of financing constraints for surveys see hubbard 1998 and stein 2003

macroeconomic conditions financial constraints and firms financing decisions abstract we examine how time varying macroeconomic conditions affect firms financing decisions a principal components decomposition of several macroeconomic variables characterizes three phases of the business cycle relative to recessions early recovery robust recovery and economic crest a fourth represents windows of opportunity in capital markets that are unrelated to recessions this characterization yields results that traditional approaches miss specifically debt issuance exhibits a non monotonic pattern during the upward phase of the business cycle it declines in robust recovery relative to recessions but peaks at the economic crest financially constrained firms issue more equity during windows of high stock market valuation whereas unconstrained firms time debt issuance in response to debt market spreads

as certain as debt and taxes estimating the tax sensitivity of leverage from state tax changes abstract using staggered corporate income tax changes across u s states we show that taxes have a first order effect on capital structure firms increase leverage by around 40 basis points for every percentage point tax increase consistent with dynamic tradeoff theory the effect is asymmetric leverage does not respond to tax cuts this is true even within firm tax increases that are later reversed nonetheless lead to permanent leverage increases the treatment effects are heterogeneous and confirm the tax channel tax sensitivity is greater among profitable and investment grade firms which respectively have a greater marginal tax benefit and lower marginal cost of issuing debt

the classical soviet type economy nature of the system and implications for reform i t is increasingly apparent that the traditional soviet type command economy is a catastrophic failure despite the touted statistical gains of real socialism during the last 40 years we now understand that these gains were largely a statistical illusion fostered by mismeasurement faulty methodology systemic incentives for exaggeration and ideologically and politically motivated distortion winiecki 1988 ericson 1990 moreover the economic system of real socialism in each of these states has imposed large negative social political ecological and personal externalities significant economic reform is now generally accepted as an imperative i am however convinced that successful economic reform of the soviet type economy will require a more comprehensive attack than hitherto attempted to understand the immense difficulties facing radical reform in the soviet union and eastern europe one needs to perceive the soviet type economy as a coherent whole a true system with its own inherent logic necessary components and natural interaction of those components it like any other economic system is as much an organism as a mechanism tending to counteract forces impinging frorn outside and to equilibrate the natural forces and tendencies that arise within it the logic and natural equilibrium of a command economy differ qualitatively and significantly from that of a largely private enterprise market economy hence reforms of a soviet type economy that are consistent with the basic nature of the system survive without altering the qualitative characteristics of

using tax return data to simulate corporate marginal tax rates abstract we document that simulated corporate marginal tax rates based on financial statement data shevlin t 1990 estimating corporate marginal tax rates with asymmetric tax treatment of gains and losses the journal of the american taxation association 11 51 67 graham j 1996a debt and the marginal tax rate journal of financial economics 41 41 73 are highly correlated with simulated rates based on corporate tax return data we provide algorithms that can be used to estimate the book or tax simulated rates when they are not available we find that the simulated book marginal tax rate does a better job of explaining financial statement debt ratios than does the analogous tax return variable and discuss how the book simulated rate is likely to be an appropriate measure in settings with global long term considerations

environmental scanning behavior in a transitional economy evidence from russia we examined the effects of perceived strategic uncertainty in seven environmental sectors on the scanning behavior of russian executives strategic uncertainty was highest in sectors influenced by

the debt tax shield in general equilibrium abstract we study the general equilibrium effects of the corporate debt tax shield in an endowment economy with a redistributive tax system that taxes firm profits and household income and redistributes tax revenues in an attempt to harmonize households lifetime consumption opportunities in general equilibrium the debt tax shield not only affects corporate capital structure and valuation but also causes poorer households to consume more and save less at a younger age without the debt tax shield the same welfare improvements for poorer households are achievable with significantly lower tax rates

do firms undertake self tender offers to optimize capital structure this study investigates capital structure around 286 self tender offers from 1980 to 1997 firms that undertake self tender offers generally have debt ratios below their predicted levels before the offers the debt ratios following nondefensive self tender offers are close to predicted levels while the ratios following defensive self tender offers are above predicted levels further 20 and 43 of the debt ratings are downgraded following nondefensive and defensive self tender offers respectively finally the increases in debt ratios around the offers are negatively related to the difference from the predicted debt ratio before the offers

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

explicit and implicit tax effects of the r d tax credit this paper investigates the effects of the 1981 research and development r d tax credit first by examining the impact of the credit on the level of r d investment and second by estimating the magnitude of the implicit tax created by the credit the two effects are interrelated because an increase in the level of r d investment will increase the demand for r d inputs thus reducing the pretax rate of return from r d activity 1 i test the credit s investment effect using a time series r d spending model that includes both factors from the industrial organization literature to control for nontax effects and an r d credit usability variable to capture the incentive created by the credit previous research has produced mixed evidence on whether the credit had any positive