One important feature of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is that many families receive a large lump-sum payment when they file their taxes each year. In this paper, we use the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) wealth topical modules from 1990 to 2008 to analyze the impact of the expansions of the EITC at the federal and state level over the last twenty years on household sav...

We study optimal fiscal policy in a small open economy (SOE) with sovereign and private default risk. The SOE’s government uses linear taxation to fund exogenous expenditures and uses public debt to inter-temporally allocate tax distortions. We characterize a class of environments in which the tax on labor goes to zero in the long run, while the tax on capital income may be non-zero, reversing ...

Most capital structure models assume that the decision of how much debt to issue is a static choice. In practice, however, firms adjust outstanding debt levels in response to changes in firm value. In this article, we solve for the optimal dynamic capital strategy of a firm and investigate the implications for optimal leverage ratios and the magnitude of the tax benefits to debt. Below, we cons...

Viability theory is the study of dynamical systems that asks “what is the set of initial conditions that generate evolutions, which obey the laws of motion of a system plus other constraints, for the length of the evolution”. We apply viability theory to Judd’s (JPE, 1987) dynamic tax model to identify which economic states are viable, in that the application of annually constrained tax-rate ad...

this paper aims at comparing tax effort in iran with that of 14 developing countries including jordan, algeria, malaysia, congo, nicaragua, india, sri lanka, paraguay, tunisia, peru, venezuela, philippine, and south africa. a tax ratio model is developed for this purpose. seemingly unrelated regression (sur) method and panel data for 1994-2002 periods are utilized to estimate the model. the res...

We analyze a model of optimal capital structure and liquidity choice based on a dynamic tradeoff theory for financially constrained firms. In addition to the classical tradeoff between the expected tax advantages of debt and bankruptcy costs, we introduce a cost of external financing for the firm, which generates a precautionary demand for liquidity and an optimal liquidity management policy fo...

This paper examines the optimal mix and priority structure of bank and market debt using a tax shield-bankruptcy cost tradeoff model where the only unique feature of banks is their ability to renegotiate. Closed-form expressions are derived for the values of renegotiable bank debt, non-renegotiable market debt, equity, and levered firm values. Optimal debt structure hinges upon ex post bargaini...

A panel of industrial countries is examined for evidence of `tax smoothing’. Tax smoothing results when governments minimize tax distortions over time. The model provides a positive theory of government debt and is due primarily to Barro. Unit root tests are performed in panel data to test the null hypothesis of nonstationary tax rates. Panel regressions are then undertaken to test the null hyp...