We develop a method for identifying public firms in tax records in order to compare the investments of public and private firms using a representative sample of all US corporations. Despite private firms being significantly smaller than public firms on average, in aggregate, they account for an...

Using data from U.S. corporate tax returns, which provide a sample representative of the universe of U.S. corporations, we investigate the differential investment propensities of public and private firms. Re-weighting the data to generate observationally comparable sets of public and private...

This paper develops and tests the hypothesis that accounting rules mitigate the effect 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. I estimate the...

We discuss budgetary institutions and the evolution of tax systems in the state and local sector, drawing on evidence from New York City. An increasing reliance on personal income taxes and a corresponding de–emphasis on property taxes have made the city’s tax revenues significantly less...

This paper develops and tests the hypothesis that accounting rules mitigate the effect of tax policy on firm investment decisions by obscuring the timing of tax pay-ments. I model a firm that maximises a discounted weighted average of after-tax cash flows and accounting profits. I estimate the...

Recent literature has claimed that the 2003 U.S. dividend tax cut caused a large increase in aggregate dividend payouts. I document four simple facts that call this claim into question. First, the post-tax cut increase in dividend payouts coincided with a surge in corporate profits, such that...