This paper examines a firm’s investment intensity and timing decisions using a real options approach. The firm is endowed with a perpetual option to invest in a project at any time by incurring an irreversible investment cost at that instant. The amount of the irreversible investment cost determines the intensity of investment with decreasing returns to scale. The project generates a stream of ...

This paper studies the effects of effluent taxes on firms’ allocation of resources to cost-reducing and emission-reducing R&D, and on entrepreneurs’ decisions to develop new goods and enter the market. A tax set at an exogenous rate that does not depend on the state of technology reduces growth, the level of consumption of each good, and raises the number of firms. The induced increase in the v...

This article uses data from survey questions fielded on the 2011 wave of the Cognitive Economics Study to uncover systematic errors in perceptions of income tax rates. First, when asked about the marginal tax rates (MTRs) for households in the top tax bracket, respondents underestimate the top MTR on wages and salary income, overestimate the MTR on dividend income, and therefore significantly u...

This paper analyzes the sources of heterogeneity in tax-minimizing strategies across individuals. We summarize insights obtained from the literature into three conditions affecting participation in tax minimization: namely, incentive, access, and awareness. Using a rich Swedish administrative panel data set on corporations, individuals, and active owners of closely held corporations, we analyze...

a r t i c l e i n f o Keywords: Income tax deductions for losses Private insurance Optimal income tax Kaplow (1992) shows that allowing income tax deductions for losses as partial insurance is undesirable in the presence of private insurance markets. This paper revisits the issue by considering a model that integrates Kaplow (1992) with Stiglitz (1982). We address the following question: Whethe...

Recent financial crises in Europe as well as the periodic battles in the U.S. over the debt ceiling point to the importance of fiscal discipline among developed countries. This paper develops an open economy model, calibrated to the U.S. and a subset of the EMU, to evaluate the impact of various permanent tax changes. The first set of experiments considers a targeted one percentage point reduct...

f or several decades, the selection of a proper tax base has been among the most serious concerns for the economic policy makers. the computable general equilibrium models analysis provides a comprehensive framework for the investigation of the effects of the adopted policies on the economy of a country. in the present study, using a static computable general equilibrium, the effects of tax re...

This paper analyzes optimal linear taxes on capital and labor incomes in a life-cycle model of human capital investment, financial savings, and labor supply with heterogenous individuals. A dual income tax with positive marginal tax rates on not only labor but also capital income is optimal. The key function of the tax on capital income is to reduce labor tax distortions on human capital accumu...