Recent research in macroeconomics has emphasized the importance of linking the financial and real sectors and the need for working with optimizing models. Tobin’s Q model of investment would appear to provide a framework that can satisfy these two criteria. In contrast to the original...

Despite their solid theoretical basis, models of business investment based on Tobin's Q theory have recorded a generally disappointing empirical performance. This paper examines one possible source of misspecification. When the firm's technology is expanded to include two or more capital inputs,...

In his Fisher-Schultz Lecture, Martin Feldstein examined the effects of non-neutral tax rules on business investment by estimating three econometric models, and he concluded that "the rising rate of inflation has, because of the structure of existing U.S. tax rules, substantially discouraged...

The conditions under which the unobserved shadow price of capital can be equated to the financial value of the firm have been developed in an important paper by Hayashi (1982). Employing a more powerful analytic method, this paper reexamines the shadow price- asset value relation in a model with...

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...