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Abstract:
This paper proposes a simple partial equilibrium model to investigate the effects of government policy on venture capital backed investments. Giving up an alternative career, entrepreneurs focus their effort on a single, high risk venture each. Venture capitalists acquire an equity stake and offer a base salary as well. In addition to providing incentive compatible equity finance, they support the venture with managerial advice to raise survival chances. We analyze several policy measures addressed at venture capital activity: government spending on entrepreneurial training, subsidies to equipment investment, and output subsidies at the production stage. While these measures stimulate entrepreneurship, only cost-effective government services can improve welfare.

Venture capital, moral hazard, managerial advice, public policy

Abstract:
This paper proposes a simple partial equilibrium model to investigate the effects of government policy on venture capital backed investments. Giving up an alternative career, entrepreneurs focus their effort on a single, high risk venture each. Venture capitalists acquire an equity stake and offer a base salary as well. In addition to providing incentive compatible equity finance, they support the venture with managerial advice to raise survival chances. We analyze several policy measures addressed at venture capital activity: government spending on entrepreneurial training, subsidies to equipment investment, and output subsidies at the production stage. While these measures stimulate entrepreneurship, only cost-effective government services can improve welfare.

Venture Capital, Moral Hazard, Managerial Advice, Public Policy

Abstract:
This paper proposes and analyses a model of start-up investment. Innovative entrepreneurs are commercially inexperienced and can benefit from venture capital support. Only part of them succeed in matching with a venture capitalist while the rest must resort to standard bank finance. We consider a number of policies to promote entrepreneurship and venture capital backed innovation.

Venture Capital Bank Finance, Matching, Moral Hazard, Public Policy

Abstract:
A model of start-up finance with double moral hazard is proposed. Entrepreneurs have ideas but lack own resources as well as commercial experience. Venture capitalists provide start-up finance and managerial support. Both types of agents thus jointly contribute to the firm's success, but neither type's effort is verifiable. We find that the market equilibrium is biased towards inefficiently low venture capital support. In this situation, the capital gains tax is particularly harmful. The introduction of a small tax impairs managerial advice and leads to first order welfare losses. Once the tax is in place, limitations on loss off-set may paradoxically contribute to higher quality of venture capital backed entrepreneurship and welfare.

Venture Capital, Capital Gains Taxation, Double Moral Hazard

Abstract:
This paper demonstrates that under conditions of imperfect (oligopolistic) competition, a transition from separate accounting (SA) to formula apportionment (FA) does not eliminate the problem of profit shifting via transfer pricing. In particular, if affiliates of a multinational firm face oligopolistic competition, it is beneficial for the multinational to manipulate transfer prices for tax-saving as well as strategic reasons under both FA and SA. The analysis shows that a switch from SA rules to FA rules may actually strengthen profit shifting activities by multinationals.

Abstract:
In recent years, venture capital has increasingly become a factor in the financing of new firms. We examine how the value of mature firms determines the incentives of entrepreneurs to start up new firms and of venture capitalists to finance and advise them. We examine how capital gains taxes as well as subsidies to start-up costs of new firms affect venture capital backed entrepreneurship. We also argue that dividend and capital gains taxes on mature firms have important consequences for start-up firms as well.

Taxes, venture capital, entrepreneurship, double moral hazard

Abstract:
In this paper we set up a model of start-up finance under double moral hazard. Entrepreneurs lack own resources and business experience to develop their ideas. Venture capitalists can provide start-up finance and commercial support. The effort put forth by either agent contributes to the firm's success, but is not verifiable. As a result, the market equilibrium is biased towards inefficiently low venture capital support. The capital gains tax becomes especially harmful, as it further impairs advice and causes a first-order welfare loss. Once the capital gains tax is in place, limitations on loss offset may paradoxically contribute to higher quality of venture capital finance and welfare. Subsidies to physical investment in VC-backed startups are detrimental in our framework.

venture capital, capital gains taxation, double moral hazard.

Abstract:
This paper provides an analysis of the proposal for introducing a minimum withholding tax on interest in the EU. We present a model with three countries: a typical EU country, an "inside" tax haven, and an "outside" tax haven. In the initial non-cooperative solution, the former two countries impose withholding taxes on interest. We investigate what happens to welfare in these countries if the "inside" tax haven is forced to raise its withholding tax. From the model we proceed to a broader evaluation of the minimum withholding tax proposal.

Abstract:
In financing start-up firms, venture capitalists carefully select among alternative projects, design incentive compatible financial contracts and support portfolio companies with value enhancing managerial advice. This paper considers how venture capitalists can induce self-selection among entrepreneurial firms with different qualities by designing appropriate contracts and offering commercial support. We study the efficiency of the competitive market equilibrium with respect to the level and quality of entrepreneurship and the level of effort by entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. We also provide comparative statics results with respect to basic preference and technology parameters.

venture capital, entrepreneurship, self-selection, moral hazard

Abstract:
This paper considers a world of many symmetric countries where public goods in principle are financed by taxes on saving, investment and pure profits. In theory, countries could use all three taxes in combination. In practice, however, the tax instrument set may be restricted by, for instance, tax evasion of a particular kind or some international agreement. This paper compares welfare levels if countries set taxes noncooperatively across different tax instrument sets. We find that depending on the strength of preferences for public goods, tax evasion that renders either saving or investment taxes infeasible may be welfare improving, if firms are in part foreign-owned.

Abstract:
We use a simple framework where firms in two countries serve their respective domestic markets and a world market to analyze under which conditions cost-reducing mergers will be beneficial for the merging firms, the home country, and the world as a whole. For a national merger, the policies enacted by a national merger authority tend to be overly restrictive from a global efficiency perspective. In contrast, all international mergers that benefit the merging firms will be cleared by either a national or a regional regulator, and this laissez-faire approach is also globally efficient. Finally, we derive the properties of the endogenous merger equilibrium.

merger policy, international trade

Abstract:
An investigation of the optimal boundary between public and private production.

Huizinga and Nielsen investigate the optimal boundary between the public and private production sectors. They use a model in which government and private production coexist - in which a range of production activities can be carried out by either the government or the private sector.
In effect, the government determines which activities to maintain within the public sector and which to privatize. In choosing the sectoral boundary, the government trades off the relative inefficiency of marginal government production against the private investment distortion created by tax policy.

In an open economy, the private investment decision is distorted by a source-based income tax. In a closed economy, the private investment decision is distorted by either a private investment tax or a savings tax. Either tax produces a wedge between the gross return on investment and the net-of-tax return received by savers. Because of this tax wedge, the private cost of capital exceeds the shadow cost of public capital.

Optimally, the government sector is shown to be too large in the sense that the government carries out some activities in which it has an efficiency disadvantage and the private sector has an efficiency advantage. And it invests more in those activities than the private sector would. Generally the size of the government sector is related positively to the investment tax wedge.

The level of investment taxes - and thus the size of the state production sector - may be affected by tax competition in the international economy. As international capital becomes more mobile, there seems to be more scope for international (investment) tax competition. As a result of tax competition, perhaps, corporate income tax rates have been on a downward trend in European countries. In Europe, the general lowering of corporate income tax rates has coincided with a trend toward privatizing government activities.

Huizinga and Nielsen focus on the relationship between capital income taxes and the size of the government production sector. Analogously, one could consider the relationship between labor income taxes and the size of the state sector. In that instance, the model predicts that a formerly state-owned enterprise, after privatization, reduces its payroll. Privatization also seems to lead to reduced employment levels.

These results hold in both open economy and closed economy versions of the model.

This paper - a product of the Finance and Private Sector Development Division, Policy Research Department - is part of a larger effort in the department to understand private sector development.

Abstract:
The paper examines how country tax differences affect a multinational enterprise's choice to centralize or de-centralize its decision structure. Within a simple model that emphasizes the multiple conflicting roles of transfer prices in MNEs - here, as a strategic pre-commitment device and a tax manipulation instrument -, we show that de-centralized decisions are more profitable when tax differentials are (small) large.

centralized vs. de-centralized decisions, taxes, MNEs

Abstract:
The paper studies the effects of tax policy on venture capital activity. Entrepreneurs pursue a single high risk project each but have no own resources. Financiers provide equity finance. They must structure the entrepreneur's profit share and base salary to assure their incentives for full effort. In addition to providing equity finance, venture capitalists assist with valuable business advice to enhance survival rates. Within a general equilibrium framework with a traditional and an entrepreneurial sector, the paper investigates the effects of taxes on the equilibrium level of entrepreneurship and managerial advice. It considers dierential wage and capital income taxes, a comprehensive income tax, incomplete loss offset, progressive taxation as well as investment and output subsidies to the entrepreneurial sector.

Abstract:
The Paper studies the effects of tax policy on venture capital activity. Entrepreneurs pursue a single high-risk project each but have no own resources. Financiers provide equity finance. They must structure the entrepreneur's profit share and base salary to assure their incentives for full effort. In addition to providing equity finance, venture capitalists assist with valuable business advice to enhance survival rates. Within a general equilibrium framework with a traditional and an entrepreneurial sector, the Paper investigates the effects of taxes on the equilibrium level of entrepreneurship and managerial advice. It considers differential wage and capital income taxes, a comprehensive income tax, incomplete loss offset, and progressive taxation, as well as investment and output subsidies to the entrepreneurial sector.

Entrepreneurship, moral hazard, subsidies, taxes, venture capital

Abstract:
It is observed in the real world that taxes matter for location decisions and that multinationals shift profits by transfer pricing. The US and Canada use Formula Apportionment (FA) to tax corporate income, and the EU is debating a switch from Separate Accounting (SA) to FA. This paper develops a theoretical model that compares basic properties of FA to SA. The focal point of the analysis is on how changes in tax rates affect capital formation, input choice, and transfer pricing as well as spillovers on tax revenue in other countries. The analysis shows that a move from SA to FA will not eliminate such spillovers and will, in cases identified in the paper, actually aggravate them.

Transfer prices, separate accounting, formula apportionment, tax externalities

Abstract:
Ignoring tax avoidance possibilities, a value-added tax and a cash-flow income tax have identical behavioral and distributional consequences. Yet the available means of tax avoidance under each are very different. Under a VAT, avoidance occurs through cross-border shopping, whereas under an income tax it occurs through shifting taxable income abroad. Given avoidance, we show that a country would make use of both taxes in order to minimize the efficiency costs of avoidance activity, relying relatively more on that tax that is harder to avoid. We then make use of aggregate Danish tax and accounting data from 1992 to measure the amount of avoidance that occurred under the two taxes. While the estimates of avoidance activity are small, the figures imply that Denmark could reduce the real costs of avoidance activity by putting more weight on income rather than value- added taxes.

Abstract:
In recent years, venture capital has increasingly become a factor in the financing of new firms. We examine how the value of mature firms determines the incentives of entrepreneurs to start up new firms and of venture capitalists to finance and advise them. We examine how capital gains taxes as well as subsidies to start-up costs of new firms affect venture capital-backed entrepreneurship. We also argue that dividend and capital gains taxes on mature firms have important consequences for start-up firms as well.

Taxes, venture capital, entrepreneurship, double moral hazard

Abstract:
A model of start-up finance with double moral hazard is proposed. Entrepreneurs have ideas but lack their own resources as well as commercial experience. Venture capitalists provide start-up finance and managerial support. Both types of agents thus jointly contribute to the firm's success, but neither type's effort is verifiable. We find that the market equilibrium is biased towards inefficiently low venture capital support. In this situation, the capital gains tax is particularly harmful. The introduction of a small tax impairs managerial advice and leads to first order welfare losses. Once the tax is in place, limitations on loss offset may paradoxically contribute to higher quality of venture capital backed entrepreneurship and welfare.

Venture capital, capital gains taxation, double moral hazard

Abstract:
We examine how a multinational's choice to centralize or de-centralize its decision structure is affected by country tax differentials. Within a simple model that emphasizes the multiple conflicting roles of transfer prices in MNEs - here, as a strategic pre-commitment device and a tax manipulation instrument - we show that decentralization is preferred in case of small tax differentials, whereas centralization can be more profitable, when tax differentials are large. In essence, the organizational flexibility of MNEs is triggered by the scope for tax minimization. Our analysis allows for both commitment and non-commitment to transfer prices, and for alternative modes of competition.

Centralized vs. de-centralized decisions, taxes, transfer prices, MNEs

Abstract:
National budget deficits can create externalities through their effects on international interest rates. This paper examines the scope for fiscal rules restricting government borrowing for the case where government revenues (on the margin) stem from capital income taxation. There is no need to coordinate national borrowing, if governments have access to both a saving and an investment tax instrument. In the absence of a saving tax, however, national fiscal policies affect welfare abroad through the international interest rate. A reduction in first period deficits tied to increased government spending later is always welfare improving. Reducing first period deficits without further coordination of subsequent tax and spending policies will generally not improve welfare.