We present empirical evidence which suggests that a big increase in dividend taxation for UK pension funds in July 1997 affected the form in which some UK companies chose to make dividend payments, but otherwise had limited effects on both the level of dividend payments and the level of...

Double taxation of company dividends is reduced in the UK by a partial imputation system of corporation tax, which was introduced in 1973. Payments of advance corporation tax (ACT) charged on dividend distributions can normally be offset against the firm's corporation tax liability. However, for...

This paper considers the relationship between two general neutral business tax structures, which we label the Ѧirm tax' and the ѳhareholder taxҮ The well-known R-based and S-based cash flow taxes, analysed by Meade (1978), are special cases of these two taxes. We demonstrate the...

This chapter reviews developments to improve on the poor performance of the standard GMM estimator for highly autoregressive panel series. It considers the use of the "system" GMM estimator that relies on relatively mild restrictions on the initial condition process. This system GMM estimator...

We consider the estimation of Cobb-Douglas production functions using panel data covering a large sample of companies observed for a small number of time periods. Standard GMM estimators, which eliminate unobserved firm-specific e¤ects by taking first differences, have been found to produce...

This paper provides a discussion of stamp duty and its effects. This is followed by an empirical study using changes in the rate of stamp duty in the UK as natural experiments. Because shares will be affected differently depending on how frequently they are traded, we can employ a...

In this paper we examine the properties of a simple criterion-based, likelihood ratio type test of parameter restristions for standard GMM estimators in autoregressive panel data models. A comparison is made with recent test proposals based in the continuously-updated GMM criterion (Hansen,...

Evidence that cash flow has a significant effect on company investment spending, after controlling for Tobin's average Q, has often been interpreted as suggesting the importance of financing constraints. Recent work on measurement error in the Q model casts doubt on this interpretation. It is...