In this paper, we use an exogenous variation in tax regulations to analyze the impact of bonus depreciation programs on business investment. To promote economic convergence of Eastern and Western Germany after reunification, bonus depreciation tax incentives were granted for investments in...

The tax bias in favour of debt finance under the corporate income tax means that corporate debt ratios exceed the socially optimal level. This creates a rationale for thin-capitalization rules limiting the amount of debt that qualifies for interest deductibility. This paper sets up a model of...

We analyze the effect of investor level taxes, firm-specific ownership structure and firm-specific payout policy on firms' capital structure choice. Our analysis is based on data for 10,983 firms from 13 Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries over the time period 2002-2012. Our results...

Tax provisions favoring corporate debt over equity finance ("debt bias") are widely recognized as a risk to financial stability. This paper explores whether and how thin-capitalization rules, which restrict interest deductibility beyond a certain amount, affect corporate debt ratios and mitigate...

Estimating the impact of risk aversion on emigration at the individual level is complicated by selection issues. In this paper, we use original data from Albania on mobility intentions and elicited risk aversion to provide causal estimates on this relationship. Our identification strategy relies...

We conduct a survey and incentivized lab-in-the-field experimental tasks in Tirana, Albania. While the original purpose of our study was to examine whether and how deep parameters such as time and risk preferences affect the intention to migrate, our study was transformed into a natural...

When companies finance their investment via the international markets for stocks and bonds, relief from domestic personal taxes on dividends and capital gains will not reduce the cost of capital. Some authors have shown that even for small domestic companies whose shares are not traded...

This paper examines how the effects of dividend taxation on the cost of new equity funds depend on whether or not shareholders can recover their original equity injections without being subject to the dividend tax. We point out the alternative assumptions in the literature on this, and we...

Existing theories of a firm’s optimal capital structure seem to fail in explaining why many healthy and profitable firms rely heavily on equity financing, even though benefits associated with debt (like tax shields) appear to be high and the bankruptcy risk low. This holds in particular for...