This paper examines how the quality of firm information disclosure affects shareholders' use of dividends to mitigate agency problems. Managerial compensation is linked to firm value. However, because the manager and shareholders are asymmetrically informed, the manager can manipulate the firm's...

This paper develops and tests the hypothesis that accounting rules mitigate the impact of tax policy on firm investment decisions by obscuring the timing of tax payments. I model a firm that maximizes a discounted weighted average of after-tax cash flows and accounting profits. The cost of...

What is the policy uncertainty surrounding expiring taxes? How uncertain are the approvals of routine extensions of temporary tax policies? To answer these questions, I use event studies to measure cumulative abnormal returns (CARs) for firms that claimed the U.S. research and development (R&D)...

In 2005, Prosper launched the first peer-to-peer lending website in the US, allowing for consumers to apply for and receive loans entirely online. To understand the effect of this new credit source, we match application-level data from Prosper to credit bureau data. Post application, borrowers'...

Default auctions at central counterparties (or 'CCPs') are critically important to financial stability. However, due to their unique features and challenges, standard auction theory results do not immediately apply. This paper presents a model for CCP default auctions that incorporates the CCP's...

This paper develops a new-Keynesian model with nominal depreciation allowances to consider the effects of temporary tax-based investment incentives on capital spending and real activity. In particular, we investigate the effects of a temporary expensing allowance on investment in partial and...

Recent years have seen large increases in the prices of houses, farm products, and oil, often with little clear connection to economic fundamentals. These price increases created plausibly exogenous shifts in demand for construction, farm, and mining machinery. This paper uses these demand...

This paper uses data from the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) and the NBER TAXSIM model to estimate marginal and average tax rates for households that own businesses that are pass-thru entities. We examine how marginal and average tax rates vary by the size of business using four different...

Can policies directed at the banking sector in one jurisdiction spill over and affect real economic activity elsewhere? To investigate this question, I exploit changes in tax rates on bank profits across U.S. states. Banks respond by reallocating small-business lending to otherwise unaffected...

Because policymakers may consider the state of the economy when setting taxes, endogeneity bias can arise in regression models that estimate relationships between economic variables and taxes. This paper quantifies the policy endogeneity bias and estimates the impact of R&D tax incentives on R&D...