Evidence that high tax rates significantly depress capital gains realizations is inconsistent with the implications of neoclassical investment models in unchanging economic environments. Higher tax rates reduce after-tax investment returns, thereby encouraging investors to sell capital assets...

Tax harmonization entails a uniform rate that may not suit all governments. Harmonization can advance collective governmental objectives only if the standard deviation of tax rates is less than the average downward effect of tax competition on rates. Since an efficient harmonized tax rate undoes...

Interest paid by U.S. state and local bonds is tax-exempt, making these bonds attractive to investors - though a tax rule limits arbitrage opportunities by restricting associated interest expense deductions. Prior to 1986, U.S. banks were not subject to the interest deduction limitation, making...

The generosity of Unemployment Insurance (UI) benefits was expanded during the pandemic (FPUC), along with the groups of workers eligible for benefits (PUA). These two programs were set to expire in September 2021, but 18 states opted out of both in June 2021. Using Current Population Survey...

This paper focuses on precautionary saving against uncertain longevity and on the annuity insurance aspects of social security within the life-cycle framework. The principal findings are three. First, the evolution of social security is reviewed in response to missing markets for providing...

Attempts to measure the impacts of pensions on household saving have occupied much of the literature in empirical public finance over the past decade. The emphasis here is on the annuity insurance aspects of social security and pensions. A simple life-cycle model is put forth to show that even...

The entitlement to social security retirement benefits is a major component of aggregate household wealth. This paper focuses on the impact of social security annuities on household portfolio allocation, extending existing optimizing models of portfolio allocation to explicitly consider the role...

Over the past decade, a number of researchers have extended conventional models of business fixed investment to incorporate a role for financial constraints' in determining investment. This paper reviews developments and challenges in this empirical research, and uses advances in models of...

This paper argues that the terms `money view' and `credit view' are not always well defined in theoretical and empirical debates over the transmission mechanism of monetary policy. Recent models of information and incentive problems in financial markets suggest the usefulness of decomposing the...