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Abstract:
We show that the many unusual features of China's financial markets are consistent with a government choosing regulations to maximize a standard type of social welfare function. Under certain conditions, these regulations are equivalent to imposing explicit taxes on business and interest income, yet should be much easier to enforce. The observed implicit tax rates are broadly in line with those observed in other countries. The theory also forecasts, however, that China will face increasing incentives over time to shift to explicit taxes.

Abstract:
We show that the many unusual features of China's financial markets are consistent with a government choosing regulations to maximize a standard type of social welfare function. Under certain conditions, these regulations are equivalent to imposing explicit taxes on business and interest income, yet should be much easier to enforce. The observed implicit tax rates are broadly inline with those observed in other countries. The theory also forecasts, however, that China will face increasing incentives over time to shift to explicit taxes.

Abstract:
To date, China has maintained a variety of restrictions on its financial markets. In addition to imposing capital controls and regulating interest rates, the government controls both the set of firms that can sell equity on the domestic or foreign stock markets, and the amount they can sell. China is unique in that foreigners pay much less than domestic investors for intrinsically identical shares. In this paper, we show that these characteristics of the Chinese financial market are consistent with a government choosing regulations to maximize a standard type of social welfare function. The observed policy of charging much higher prices for equity sold to domestic than to foreign investors can simply reflect the more inelastic demand for equity by domestic investors. Under certain conditions, these regulations are equivalent to income taxes on business and interest income. The pattern of tax rates is not qualitatively different from those commonly observed elsewhere, particularly in other countries with capital controls. Given the ease with which firms and individuals can evade income taxes, however, indirect taxation through restrictions on the financial market may serve as an effective alternative.

Abstract:
Why has the rapid privatization of firms in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union not brought dramatically higher performance as expected? If private ownership were so clearly dominant, why has state control of enterprises been such a common phenomenon historically, even in many Western countries? In this paper, we argue that with private ownership, any price distortions (whether from high tax rates or explicit price controls) generate efficiency losses roughly proportional to the square of the implicit tax rate. In contrast, the efficiency loss under state ownership should be largely independent of these implicit tax rates. Therefore, the efficiency loss from state ownership can be less than that from private ownership when price distortions become large enough. Historically, there does seem to have been a close association between state ownership and high tax rates. For good reasons, privatization is normally associated with sharp drops in tax and nontax distortions. When privatization occurs without a substantial reduction in tax rates, as in Russia, efficiency costs from the high tax rates have been obvious, raising questions about the internal consistency of this set of policies.

Abstract:
When the top personal tax rates are above the corporate rate, high-income individuals have an incentive to reclassify their earnings as corporate rather than personal income for tax purposes. U.S. tax law at least imposes strict limits on the extent to which employees in publicly traded corporations can engage in such income shifting. However, entrepreneurs setting up new firms can easily reclassify their income for tax purposes. This tax incentive therefore favors entrepreneurial activity. The paper discusses how best to subsidize entrepreneurial activity while avoiding other economic distortions.

Abstract:
The integration of world capital markets carries important implications for the design and impact of tax policies. This paper evaluates research findings on international taxation, drawing attention to connections and inconsistencies between theoretical and empirical observations. Diamond and Mirrlees (1971) note that small open economies incur very high costs in attempting to tax the returns to local capital investment, since local factors bear the burden of such taxes in the form of productive inefficiencies. Richman (1963) argues that countries may simultaneously want to tax the worldwide capital income of domestic residents, implying that any taxes paid to foreign governments should be merely deductible from domestic taxable income. Governments do not adopt policies that are consistent with these forecasts. Corporate income is taxed at high rates by wealthy countries, and most countries either exempt foreign-source income of domestic multinationals from tax provide credits rather than deductions for taxes paid abroad. Furthermore, individual investors can use various methods to avoid domestic taxes on their foreign-source incomes, in the process also avoiding taxes on their domestic-source incomes. Individual and firm behavior also differs from that forecast by simple theories. Observed portfolios are not fully diversified worldwide. Foreign direct investment is common even when it faces tax penalties relative to other investment in host countries. While economic activity, and tax avoidance activity, is highly responsive to tax rates and tax structure, there are many aspects of tax-motivated behavior that are difficult to reconcile with simple microeconomic incentives. There are promising recent efforts to reconcile observations with theory. To the extent that multinational firms possess intangible capital on which they earn returns with foreign direct investment, even small countries may have a degree of market power, leading to fiscal externalities. Tax avoidance is pervasive, generating further fiscal externalities. These concepts are useful in explaining behavior, and observed tax policies, and they also suggest that international agreements have the potential to improve the efficiency of tax systems worldwide.

Abstract:
Entrepreneurial activity is presumed to generate important spillovers, potentially justifying tax subsidies. How does the tax law affect individual incentives? How much of an impact has it had in practice? We first show theoretically that taxes can affect the incentives to be an entrepreneur due simply to differences in tax rates on business vs. wage and salary income, due to differences in the tax treatment of losses vs. profits through a progressive rate structure and through the option to incorporate, and due to risk-sharing with the government. We then provide empirical evidence using U.S. individual tax return data that these aspects of the tax law have had large effects on actual behavior.

Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

Abstract:
Tax policies seen in developing countries are puzzling on many dimensions. To begin with, revenue/GDP is surprisingly small compared with that in developed economies. Taxes on labor income play a minor role. Taxes on consumption are important, but effective tax rates vary dramatically by firm, with many firms avoiding taxes entirely by operating through cash in the informal economy and others facing very high liabilities. Taxes on capital are an important source of revenue, as are tariffs and seignorage, all contrary to the theoretical literature.
In this paper, we argue that all of these aspects of policy may be sensible responses if a government is able in practice to collect taxes only from those firms that make use of the financial sector. Through use of the financial sector, firms generate a paper trail, facilitating tax enforcement. The threat of disintermediation then limits how much can be collected in taxes. Taxes can most easily be collected from the firms most dependent on the financial sector, presumably capital-intensive firms. Given the resulting differential tax rates by sector, other policies would sensibly be used to offset these tax distortions. Tariff protection for capital-intensive firms is one. Inflation, imposing a tax on the cash economy is another.

Abstract:
In this paper we investigate the extent to which the U.S. income tax system of 2004 collects tax on capital income, and the implications of extending tax-preferred savings accounts. We do so by applying a methodology that estimates how much tax is collected on capital income by calculating how much tax revenue would change if the tax system were modified to exempt income from capital in present value - specifically by adopting what the Meade Committee (1978) called an "R-base tax" - while leaving the tax rate structure and tax incentives otherwise unchanged. The difference between actual revenue and revenue under this alternative tax system is a measure of how much tax on capital income is collected under current law. We find that, as of 2004, the U.S. tax system has returned to the situation of the mid-1980s wherein our income tax system raises little revenue from taxing capital income. If extensive tax-free savings accounts were to be introduced, the system would raise almost no revenue from capital income and possibly subsidize, rather than tax, capital income. The main culprit in this state of affairs is the retention of interest deductibility. Although the revenue from taxing capital income is small, the gains that would result from a clean consumption tax have not been attained, as there remain distortions to both saving and investment decisions, and distortions across capital assets, portfolios, corporate financing, and choice of organizational form under the patchwork of provisions that have been adopted.

consumption tax, capital income, income tax

Abstract:
Several recent papers argue that corporate income taxes should not be used by small, open economies. With capital mobility, the burden of the tax falls on fixed factors (e.g., labor), and the tax system is more efficient if labor is taxed directly. However, corporate taxes not only exist but rates are roughly comparable with the top personal tax rates. Past models also forecast that multinationals should not invest in countries with low corporate tax rates, since the surtax they owe when profits are repatriated puts them at a competitive disadvantage. Yet such foreign direct investment is substantial. We suggest that the resolution of these puzzles may be found in the role of income shifting, both domestic (between the personal and corporate tax bases) and cross-border (through transfer pricing). Countries need cash-flow corporate taxes as a backstop to labor taxes to discourage individuals from converting their labor income into otherwise untaxed corporate income. We explore how these taxes can best be modified to deal as well with cross-border shifting.

Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

Abstract:
No abstract is available for this paper.

Abstract:
In a Federal system of government, each unit of government decides independently how much of each type of public good to provide, and what types of taxes, and which tax rates, to use in funding the public goods. In this paper we explore what types of problems can arise from this decentralized form of decision-making. In particular, we describe systematically the types of externalities that one unit of government can create for nonresidents, through both its public goods decisions and its taxation decisions. The paper also explores briefly what the central government might do to lessen the costs of decentralized decision-making.

Abstract:
Past attempts to measure the impact of taxes on corporate debt policy have focused on larger firms. Given that the top statutory corporate tax rate has varied little in recent years, tax incentives vary among these firms, almost entirely due to current or prospective tax losses. Results are inevitably mixed, given that firms with losses or nondebt tax shields may have different propensities to borrow even ignoring taxes. This paper uses US Statistics of Income balance sheet data on all corporations, to compare the debt policies of firms of different sizes. Given the progressivity in the corporate tax schedule, small firms face very different tax rates than larger firms. Relative tax rates have also changed frequently over time. Our results suggest that taxes have had a strong and statistically significant effect on debt levels. In particular, the difference in corporate tax rates currently faced by the largest vs. the smallest firms (35% vs. 15%) is forecast to induce larger firms to finance an additional 8% of their assets with debt, compared with smaller firms.

Abstract:
How do dividend taxes affect firm behavior and what are their distributional and efficiency effects? To answer these questions, the first problem is coming up with an explanation for why firms pay dividends, in spite of their tax penalty. This paper surveys three different models for why firms pay dividends, and then uses each model to examine the behavioral and efficiency effects of dividend taxes. The three models examined are: the "new view," an agency cost explanation, and a signaling model. While all three models forecast dividends, their forecasts regarding other firm behavior, and their forecasts for the efficiency and distributional effects of a dividend tax, often differ. Given the evidence to date, we find the agency model is the one most consistent with the data.

Abstract:
The empirical literature that seeks to measure the effective tax rate on new investment offers a striking paradox. On the one hand, summary measures of the effective tax rate on new investment are normally quite high. On the other hand, the amount of revenue actually collected from taxing capital income is apparently very low. In this paper we derive explicitly how revenue figures (under the existing system and under a hypothetical R-base tax) can be used to construct an estimate of the true effective tax rate on capital income, and how this measure and existing measures are affected by several factors, including resale of assets (churning), risk, pure profits, debt finance and arbitrage, and choice of organizational form.We conclude that our new methodology provides a very useful, but not fail-safe, approach for measuring the effective tax rate on new investment. It is much more robust than the standard measures, such as King-Fullerton marginal effective tax rates complications in the tax law. In trying to reconcile the high conventional measures of the effective tax rate with the low revenue collected, we conclude that the effective tax rate does seem to be much lower than existing measures suggest.

Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

Abstract:
Changes in tax policy can affect all aspects of the economy. Not only do firms and individuals change behavior, creating efficiency costs, but government expenditure choices can also change. Unless these expenditure choices had been optimal' previously, changes in response to a tax reform affect welfare and should be taken into account when designing tax policy. This paper develops a specific model of government behavior and then explores the implications of government, as well as private, behavioral responses for tax policy. In particular, we assume that government officials favor expenditure (or regulatory) choices that increase the government's budget. As a result, higher tax rates on a particular activity encourage government behavior that aids the growth of this activity. This response enables tax policy to redirect government activity in desirable directions, but it also makes Pigovian taxes on negative externalities less effective.

Abstract:
In this paper, we argue that in designing government debt and tax-transfer policies, it is important to consider their implications for the allocation of risk between generations. There is no reason to presume that the market or the family can allocate risk efficiently to future generations, implying that stochastic government policies have the potential to create first-order welfare improvements. The model provides a non-Keynsian justification for debt-finance of wars and recessions, as well as an added rationale for Social Security type tax-transfer schemes which aid unlucky generations, e.g., the Depression generation,at the expense of luckier generations.

Abstract:
Given the temptation on government officials to use some of their budget for 'perks,' residents face the problem of inducing officials to reduce such 'waste.' The threat to vote out of office officials who perform poorly is one possible response. In this paper, we explore the effect that competition for residents induced by fiscal decentralization has on 'waste' in government. We find not only that such competition reduces waste and raises the utility of residents, but also that it should increase the desired level of public expenditures, and to a point above the level that jurisdictions would choose if they could coordinate. These results are in sharp contrast to the presumed effects from such 'tax competition,' and suggest an additional advantage of fiscal decentralization.

Abstract:
Two well-noted phenomena of recent decades are the increasing concentration of personal income and the declining rate of corporate profitability. This paper investigates to what extent these two trends have a common explanation extent these two trends have a common explanation-shifting of income to the personal tax base from the corporate tax base caused by the generally declining difference between personal tax rates and corporation income tax rates. This paper presents evidence that a substantial amount of income shifting has in fact occured since 1965, based on time-series regression analyses that reveal that an increase in corporate tax rates relative to personal rates resulted in an increase in reported personal income and a drop in reported corporate income, even after controlling for corproate use of debt finance and for the amount of corporate assets. We focus on one mechanism for shifting--changing the form of compensation for executives and other workers, such as between wage compensation and greater use of stock options. The potential importance of income shifting requires a reinterpretation of both the efficiency and distributional consequences of of changes in the tax structure.

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:
No abstract is available for this paper.

Abstract:
No abstract is available for this paper.

Abstract:
This paper explores the characteristics of individual portfolio holdings in a world economy with a unified securities market where there are many countries, each with its own tax rates and inflation rate. When nominal interest is taxable but income to equity owners is tax exempt in all countries, I show that the highest tax bracket investors specialize in equity and, among the remaining investors, those with lower tax rates buy bonds of countries with higher inflation rates. Because of the tax system, countries with a higher inflation rate must pay a higher real interest rate on their debt. This is necessary in equilibrium to compensate those who purchase the debt for their higher taxable income. This diversity of real rates of return in the world securities market has a variety of effects on the optimal tax policy of a small open economy. I also explore a model where there is a unified world market in bonds, but no international trade in equity. Here, I find a strong tax incentive for firms owned by investors in countries with high personal tax rates to become multinationals and invest abroad. If domestic investors do end up purchasing both bonds and domestic equity, then the optimal corporate tax rate on real corporate income in a small open economy would be quite high relative to the personal tax rate on nominal interest income, in order not to distort the portfolio composition of domestic investors.

Abstract:
The evidence on international capital immobility is extensive, ranging from the correlations between domestic savings and investment pointed out by Feldstein-Horioka (1980), to real interest differentials across countries, to the lack of international portfolio diversification. To what degree does capital immobility modify past results forecasting that small open economies should not tax savings or investment? The answer depends on the cause of this immobility. We argue that asymmetric information between countries provides the most plausible explanation for the above observations. When we examine optimal tax policy in an open economy allowing for asymmetric information, rather than simply finding that savings and investment should not be taxed, we now forecast government subsidies to foreign acquisitions of domestic firms. Some omitted factors that would argue against subsidizing foreign acquisitions are explored briefly.

Abstract:
The evidence on international capital immobility is extensive, including the lack of international portfolio diversification, real interest differentials across countries, and the high correlation between domestic savings and investment. We develop a model with asymmetric information between countries that helps rationalize all the above observations and then examine the implications of this model for optimal domestic tax policy. Without asymmetric information, past work showed that small open economies should not impose corporate income taxes. With asymmetric information, the optimal policy instead involves government subsidies to capital imports. Some omitted factors that argue against subsidizing capital imports are explored briefly.

Abstract:
No abstract is available for this paper.

Abstract:
The U.S. income tax has long been recognized as a hybrid of an income and consumption tax, with elements that do not fit naturally into either pure system. The precise nature of this hybrid has important policy implications for, among other things, understanding the impact of moving closer to a pure consumption tax regime. In this paper, we examine the nature of the U.S. income tax by calculating the revenue and distributional implications of switching from the current system to one form of consumption tax, a modified cash flow tax. Although earlier work had suggested that in 1983 such a switch would have cost little or no revenue at all, we calculate that in 1995 this switch would have cost $108.1 billion in tax revenues, suggesting that the U.S. income tax does impose some positive tax on capital income. The net gains from such a switch have a U-shaped pattern, with those in the lowest and highest deciles of labor income receiving the largest proportional gains, although those in the highest decile would have by far the largest absolute gains.

Abstract:
Intuitively, the observed 'home bias' in individual portfolios plausibly explains the international capital immobility in aggregate data reported by Feldstein and Horioka (1980) as well as the survival of taxes on capital income. These intuitions are examined explicitly in a model where random consumer prices cause individuals to invest heavily in domestic equity as a hedge against these price fluctuations. Neither intuition is fully supported by the model. While the model forecasts that extra domestic savings generate extra investment primarily in the home country, consistent with the evidence in Feldstein and Horioka, this is true regardless of whether consumer price are random and so whether portfolios have 'home bias.' In addition, while random equity returns facilitate taxes on equity income, as shown in Gordon and Varian (1989) and Huizinga and Nielsen (1997), random consumer prices appear to undermine taxes on capital income.

Abstract:
This paper analyzes the effects of the federal tax structure on
corporate financial and investment behavior. We first develop
a model of corporate behavior given taxes, taking into account
both uncertainty and costs of bankruptcy. Simpler models
abstracting from bankruptcy costs had clear counter-factual
implications. The forecasts from our model proved to be
consistent with both the observed cross-sectional variation
in debt-equity ratios and the time series pattern of
debt-equity ratios (data that were constructed in the paper).

We then attempted to measure the efficiency costs created by
corporate tax distortions as implied by the model. The
forecasted efficiency cost of the distortion favoring debt
finance seemed to be quite large, while the tax distortion
affecting investment seemed to be less important than others have
claimed. The paper concludes with a study of the efficiency
implications of vairous prposed corporate tax changes.

Abstract:
This paper studies the asset holdings of white American men near retirement age. Assets as conventional defined show no tendency to decline with age, in apparent contradiction of the life-cycle theory of saving. However, a broadened concept of assets which includes expected future pension benefits (both public and private) and expected future earnings ("human wealth") does decline more or less as predicted by the theory. No matter how they are defined, assets are a decreasing function of the number of children--which casts doubt on the strength of the bequest motive. Finally, financial assets and social security wealth fail to exhibit the inverse relationship suggested by Feldstein's displacement hypothesis. To investigate these issues econometrically, an equation for assets is developed from the strict life-cycle theory. The specification is generalized to allow for (a) a bequest motive, proxied by the number of children; (b) displacement of private wealth by social security wealth that is not exactly dollar-for dollar; (c) a level of consumption late in life that differs systematically from what the strict life-cycle theory implies. The equation is estimated by nonlinear least squares on a rich cross-sectional data set containing over 4300 observations. The results show that the life-cycle model has little ability to explain cross-sectional variability in asset holdings. The model's key parameters are poorly identified, despite the large sample size and considerable cross-sectional variation in most variables. According to the estimates, consumption late in life is on average only about half of what the strict life-cycle theory predicts; each dollar of social security wealth displaces about 39 cents (with a large standard error) of private wealth; and the bequest motive, while present, is quite weak.

Abstract:
No abstract is available for this paper.

Abstract:
No abstract is available for this paper.

Abstract:
The paper is an empirical cross-section study of the retirement decisions of American white men between the ages of 58 and 67. predicated on the theoretical notion that an individual retires when his reservation wage exceeds his market wage. Reservation wages are derived from an explicit utility function in which the most critical taste parameter is assumed to vary both systematically and randomly across individuals. Market wages are derived from a standard wage equation adjusted to the special circumstances of older workers. The two equations are estimated jointly by maximum likelihood, which takes into account the potential selectivity bias inherent in the model (low-wage individuals tend to retire and cease reporting their market wage). The model is reasonably successful in predicting retirement decisions, and casts serious doubt on previous claims that the social security system induces many workers to retire earlier than they otherwise would. The normal effects of aging (on both market and reservation wages) and the incentives set up by private pension plans are estimated to be major causes of retirement.

Abstract:
In the United States, local government expenditures are heavily subsidized through a variety of sources. This paper explores theoretically and then simulates empirically the effects of eliminating either of two federal subsidies encouraging local government expenditures: (1) income tax deductibility of local tax payments, and (2) the tax exempt status of interest on municipal bonds.We find that eliminating the deductibility of local taxes raises the utility of all income groups, and of home owners as well as of renters.Making interest on municipal bonds taxable, however, substantially hurts the very rich, who lose a tax shelter, and may hurt the very poor, who pay more for municipal services. While most people gain, the net gain is very small.

Abstract:
Current U.S. tax law creates a variety of incentives affecting municipal financial policy. Under current law,municipalities can borrow at a tax-exempt interest rate yet can earn the full market rate of return on any assets held. Residents, in contrast, if they borrow or lend as individuals,pay or earn the market rate of return but after personal income taxes. These differences in rates of return create a variety of arbitrage opportunities, allowing communities/residents to borrow at low rates and invest at higher rates.The purpose of this paper is to examine empirically the financial policy of municipalities in four states (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts and Rhode Island) to see to what degree these municipalities attempt to take advantage of each of the available opportunities to engage in tax arbitrage. Our datacomes from the 1980 U.S. Census of Population and Housing, and the 1977 U.S.Census of Governments. We find clear evidence that communities do actively engage in such tax arbitrage.

Abstract:
Why have state-owned firms been so common? One explanation, proposed in the past, is that if state firms can be induced to maximize pretax profits, then state ownership may be less inefficient than private ownership when corporate tax rates are high. If this argument were right, the capital intensity of state-owned firms should fall with privatization. The data instead shows that firms lay off workers when they are privatized. Why? This Paper argues that the government can use cheap loans from state-owned banks to maintain the capital stock of privately owned firms at an efficient level, in spite of a high corporate tax rate. State-owned firms should then have the same capital intensity as equivalent privately owned firms. The Paper then argues that many other distortions to a private firm's incentives, e.g. the minimum wage, result in their employing too few low-skilled workers. State-owned firms, in contrast, can be induced to hire the desired number of such workers. This gain must be weighted against the presumed loss in productivity more generally from state ownership.

Privatization, corporate taxes

Abstract:
Observed economic policies in developing countries differ sharply both from those observed among developed countries and from those forecast by existing models of optimal policies. For example, developing countries rely little on broad-based taxes, and make substantial use of tariffs and seignorage as nontax sources of revenue.The objective of this paper is to contrast the implications of two models designed to explain such anomalous policies. One approach, by Gordon-Li (2005), focuses on the greater difficulties faced in poor countries in monitoring taxable activity, and explores the best available policies given such difficulties. The other, building on Grossman-Helpman (1994), presumes that political-economy problems in developing countries are worse, leading to worse policy choices. The paper compares the contrasting theoretical implications of the two models with the data, and finds that the political-economy approach does poorly in reconciling many aspects of the data with the theory. In contrast, the forecasts from Gordon-Li model are largely consistent with the data currently available.

Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

Abstract:
Since the average tax rate on corporate capital income is very high, economists often conclude that taxes have caused a substantial fall in corporate investment, a movement of capital into noncorporate uses, and a fall in personal savings. The combined efficiency costs of these distortions are believed to be very important. This paper attempts to show that when uncertainty and inflation are taken into account explicitly, taxation of corporate income leaves corporate investment incentives basically unaffected, in spite of the sizable tax revenues collected. In addition, in some plausible situations, such taxes can result in a gain in efficiency. The explanation for these surprising results is that the government, by taxing capital income, absorbs a certain fraction of both the expected return and the uncertainty in the return. While investors as a result receive a lower expected return, they also bear less risk when they invest, and these two effects are largely offsetting.

Abstract:
No abstract is available for this paper.

Abstract:
During the past decade, the inflation rate has been very high by historical standards, yet the U.S. tax law has yet to adjust to this fact. The purpose of this paper is to investigate to what degree the lack of indexing of the corporate and personal income taxes by itself ought to have resulted in a change in corporate investment and financial policy, and in capital gains or losses to existing owners of corporate equity. In studying these questions, the paper models corporate financial and real decisions simultaneously, unlike other recent studies. The principal conclusions of the paper are: 1) the doubling of corporate debt-value rations can easily be rationalized solely by the interaction of inflation and the tax laws, 2) the stock market and the level of investment behaved much less favourably than would have been forecast focusing solely on the increased inflation rate, and 3) more pessimistic expectations, perhaps in combination with increased riskiness, would provide a consistent rationale for observed behaviour.

Abstract:
No abstract is available for this paper.

Abstract:
No abstract is available for this paper.

Abstract:
General equilibrium models have recently been used to simulate the effects of many proposed tax changes. However, in modeling the effects of the government on the economy, these models have assumed for simplicity that marginal tax rates equal the observed average tax rates, and that marginal benefit rates are zero. The main purpose of this paper is to derive improved estimates of various marginal tax and benefit rates. Most importantly, we include in the model recent theories concerning the effects of combined corporate and personal taxes on corporate financial and investment decisions. The conclusions previously derived concerning the effects of corporate tax integration are then reexamined in light of the proposed changes.

Abstract:
No abstract is available for this paper.

Abstract:
Many previous studies have used sibling correlations to measure the effect of family background on earnings, income? and occupational status. This paper uses data on a sample of sisters to explore the importance of family background as a determinant of welfare program participation. The results show a strikingly high degree of sibling resemblance in welfare receipt. For example, a woman`s estimated probability of having participated in welfare programs is .20 if her sister has not participated, but is -.66 if her sister has participated.

Abstract:
No abstract is available for this paper.

Abstract:
No abstract is available for this paper.

Abstract:
Why is interest income taxed more heavily than other forms of capital income? This differential tax treatment has generated substantial tax arbitrage, resulting in lower tax revenue, efficiency costs, and apparently net gains to rich borrowers and net losses to poor lenders, together suggesting that this tax treatment makes no sense on welfare grounds. In examining this argument more formally, this paper reveals two omitted considerations that can help explain the existing tax treatment. First, the forecasted increase in the market interest rate results in a redistribution from rich borrowers to poor lenders. Yet this redistribution comes at no marginal efficiency cost, starting from a situation with no distortions to portfolio choice, so at the margin dominates further redistribution through the income tax. In addition, information about an individual's portfolio choice reveals information about her earnings ability, even controlling for observed labor income, if those who are more able tend to be less risk averse. By making use of this extra information about earnings ability, the tax system can be better tailored to redistribute from able to less able, for any given efficiency cost.

Abstract:
This paper develops an econometric model of the effects of R&D effort on the magnitude and characteristics of technical change in the Bell system. We estimate simultaneously a vintage capital production function, embodying several distinct types of capital, and various factor demand functions for the Bell system during the post-war period. Each vintage of capital is assumed to differ in productivity according to a parametric function of R&D effort embodied in that vintage of capital. Allowance is also made for augmenting technical change in the non-capital inputs. The model is estimated on a new, extensive data set which contains detailed information on the vintage structure of investment indifferent types of capital in the Bell system. Most previous papers in the field have assumed that technical changeis disembodied. However, we find that a model assuming capital-embodied technical change fits the data much better than one making the traditional assumption that technical change is disembodied. We use the parameter estimates to calculate the ex post rate of return earned on R&D expenditures at Bell Laboratories and the improvements in the productivity of specific capital inputs which are due to those R&D expenditures. The results suggest not only that the return to R&D expenditures has been very high, but also that it has been growing over time. In addition,the rate of increase in the productivity of capital inputs has risen over time. The model fails to produce a plausible estimate for the degree of returns to scale, but the results on the return to R&D effort are reasonably insensitive to what we assume about the degree of economies of scale.

Abstract:
Models of corporate behavior normally assume that a firm acts in the interest of shareholders, and that shareholders care only about the returns they receive on the shares they own in that firm. But shareholders should also care about the effects of a manager's decisions on the value of shares they own in other firms, on the price they pay as consumers of the firm's output, on the value of the firm's bonds they own, on government tax revenue which finances public expenditures benefiting shareholders, etc. These effects are normally presumed to be of second order. This paper examines the presumption, argues that many of these effects are likely to be important, and examines how a variety of conventional conclusions about corporate behavior change as a result.

Abstract:
No abstract is available for this paper.

Abstract:
No abstract is available for this paper.

Abstract:
No abstract is available for this paper.

Abstract:
Current literature suggests that informationspillovers, particularly those resulting from entrepreneurial activity,generate economic growth.In light of these productive spillovers, it isreasonable to subsidize entrepreneurial activity through the taxsystem. There are several hypotheses surrounding the degree to which the tax systemactually affects the amount of entrepreneurial activity.First,individuals may be persuaded to undertake risky projects by the fact that smallbusiness owners can much more easily underreport their taxable income than canwage workers.Second, high tax rates make risky projects relatively moreattractive by providing an alternative means of risk sharing that is free fromadverse selection problems.Finally, if the marginal tax rate under thepersonal income tax is an increasing function of taxable income, thenentrepreneurs may owe substantial taxes on any profits. These hypotheses are examined in light of cross-section samples of personalincome tax returns from the U.S. Statistics of Income (1964-1993).Thedata indicate that, contrary to conventional wisdom, cuts in personal tax ratesactually reduce entrepreneurial activity.Tax cuts also imply lessrisk-sharing with the government, making self-employment less attractive towould-be entrepreneurs.Overall, tax policy and macroeconomic policiesplay key roles in generating entrepreneurial activity.For example, ashift to a 20 percent flat tax would triple the self-employmentrate.(SAA)

Incentives, Macroeconomics, Taxes, Risk orientation

Abstract:
Before the transition governments had strong distributional objectives, which they pursued mainly by direct controls over state enterprise wage rates and hiring decisions, yielding a highly compressed wage distribution. During the reform they maintained similar controls over state enterprises but had to take into account competition from the new non-state sector that was mostly free from these controls.

Abstract:
Before the transition governments had strong distributional objectives, which they pursued mainly by direct controls over state enterprise wage rates and hiring decisions, yielding a highly compressed wage distribution. During the reform they maintained similar controls over state enterprises, but had to take into account competition from the new non-state sector that was mostly free from these controls. Based on these distributional considerations alone, we forecast: 1) an immediate and continuing decline in the skills of workers in the state sector as the most able workers leave; 2) higher productivity in the non-state sector, which consists of the most able workers; 3) accounting losses in the state sector, reflecting the transfer of tax revenue to finance payments to the unskilled previously financed within the firm; and 4) restructuring within the state sector to reduce the distortions to relative wage rates. These phenomena are broadly observed across all transition economies.

Abstract:
When the top personal tax rates are above the corporate rate, high-income individuals have an incentive to reclassify their earnings as corporate rather than personal income for tax purposes. U.S. tax law at least imposes strict limits on the extent to which employees in publicly traded corporations can engage in such income shifting. However, entrepreneurs setting up new firms can easily reclassify their income for tax purposes. This tax incentive therefore favors entrepreneurial activity. The paper discusses how best to subsidize entrepreneurial activity while avoiding other economic distortions.

Abstract:
Local officials in China have strongly supported new non state firms, yet other officials in transition countries have often strongly hindered them. We argue that a likely cause of these sharp differences in behaviour is differences in the source of government revenue. Local revenue in China came from profits and other taxes on new entrants, while elsewhere in transition countries tax revenue came disproportionately from the old state enterprises. All these officials can easily draw on public funds for personal use. As a result, local Chinese officials have a personal interest in encouraging the development of new firms, while other officials have a financial interest in suppressing new firms. To induce officials to be supportive of new firms, the model suggests raising the effective tax rate on them. Surprisingly, past work has ignored the role of the tax system in influencing the incentives faced by government officials.

Abstract:
The double taxation of corporate income should discourage firms from incorporating. We investigate the extent to which the aggregate allocation of assets and taxable income in the U.S. between corporate and non-corporate firms responds to the size of this tax distortion during the period 1959-86. In theory, profitable firms should shift out of the corporate sector when the tax distortion is large, and conversely for firms with tax losses. Our empirical results provide strong support for all of these forecasts and imply that the resulting excess burden equals 16% of business tax revenue.