A political miracle occurred when Germany was reunited, and at first glance an economic miracle has followed. Real incomes in the east have now reached the western level, and investment per capita has been much higher than in the west. However, every third deutschmark spent in the east has been...

Recent research on business investment decisions suggests that real investment in plant and equipment is quite sensitive to changes in the user cost of capital, pointing to the possibility that long-run changes in tax policy may have a significant impact on an economy's capital stock. Indeed,...

Interest rates on government debt have fallen in many countries over the last several decades, with markets indicating that rates may stay low well into the future. It is by now well understood that sustained low interest rates can change the nature of long-run fiscal policy choices. In this...

This paper examines the impact of taxes on the incentive to invest for the Japanese manufacturing sector in the postwar period. The idyosyricratic feature of the Japanese corporation tax system as compared to the U.S. is the prevelence of tax-free reserves and the tax deductibility of a part of...

There is a common belief that the disappointing economic performance in the 1970s can be attributed in good part to the interaction of tax rules, inflation, and capital formation. In this paper, we reassess the relationships between inflation, the tax code, and investment incentives because...

In a recent article in this Journal, Robin Boadway has argued that the appropriate requirement for neutrality is that the present value of the returns from an initial investment of [1pound], using the social discount rate, should be equal for all projects undertaken at the margin. We have few...

Since1954, the United States government has made numerous adjustments in the tax treatment of corporate income with the aim of influencing the level and composition of fixed business investment. The effects of these reforms, principally changes in the investment tax credit, are evaluated using a...

This paper concerns the question of how the rules for calculating the investment tax credit and the associated rules for calculating depreciation allowances for tax purposes should be structured to assure the "appropriate" relationship between the subsidy granted to long-lived assets and that to...