Since World War II, direct stock ownership by households across the globe has largely been replaced by indirect stock ownership by financial institutions. We argue that tax and retirement policies are among the factors behind these changes. We develop empirical measures of two tax incentives of...

Capital gains taxation on a realization basis is known to give rise to a number of distortions and to several arbitrage opportunities that can result in a significant erosion in the tax base. Most countries tackle these problems through a series of "ad hoc" adjustments to "pure" realization...