We study whether corporate income taxation affects the long-term growth of newly incorporated companies through its effect on their choice of leverage at entry. We find that a decrease in corporate income taxation leads to a sizeable decrease in leverage at entry, and that the distribution of...

Using a novel country-industry level panel database with information on newly incorporated firms in 17 European countries between 1997 and 2004, we study how taxation of corporate income affects the size of entrants at the country-industry level. Our results, that are robust to changes in...