This paper investigates the responsiveness of household portfolios to tax incentives by exploiting a substantial tax reform that altered after-tax returns and cost of debt for a large number of households. An extraordinary panel data set that covers two years before and after the reform is used for the analysis. Our empirical findings suggest that households reshuffle their balance sheets in th...

The period of limitations is the period of time in which you can amend your tax return to claim a credit or refund, or that the IRS can assess additional tax. The below information contains the periods of limitations that apply to income tax returns. Unless otherwise stated, the years refer to the period after the return was filed. Returns filed before the due date are treated as filed on the d...

What are the macroeconomic effects of tax adjustments in response to large public debt shocks in highly integrated economies? The answer from standard closed-economy models is deceptive, because they underestimate the elasticity of capital tax revenues and ignore crosscountry spillovers of tax changes. Instead, we examine this issue using a two-country model that matches the observed elasticity...

This paper seeks to encompass elements of both the Modigliani and Miller (1958, 1963) and Jensen and Meckling (1976) approaches to optimal capital structure within a unified framework with shadow costs of incomplete information. Making the most of the major work of Merton (1987), Leland (1996, 1998) and Bellalah (2001a), we put forward a model that reflects the interaction of financing decision...

This paper studies how the method of government debt financing affects the macroeconomic performance of the transforming Chinese economy. The investigation is conducted within the context of an endogenous growth model that incorporates the major institutional features of the Chinese economy. Using this framework, we evaluate the effects on the growth rate of output and inflation if the Chinese ...

If debt markets can price the risk of projects accurately, then the interests of shareholders and the regulator diverge. Shareholders see their value maximised by an equity-rewarded executive. However we demonstrate that such executives destroy welfare by selecting excessively risky projects due to two types of government-induced distortions: the debt tax shield and the implicit too-big-to-fail...

This paper explores the implications of the political economy model of Battaglini and Coate (2008) for the behavior of fiscal policy over the business cycle. The model predicts that fiscal policy is counter-cyclical with debt increasing in recessions and decreasing in booms. Public spending increases in booms and decreases during recessions, while tax rates decrease during booms and increase in...