Road Taxes,Road User Charges and Earmarking

The UK Road Fund was set up in 1921 and financed by earmarked taxes, but was unsuccessful as a form of road finance and abandoned in 1937. The paper examines why earmarking failed and what problems arise for replacing road taxes by hypothecated road charges. These charges would need to be regulated and could evolve into a more efficient system of road pricing. The paper claims that recent experiences with regulating capital-intensive network industries make road user charging and the commercialisation of the public highway both feasible and desirable, but that recent government proposals for local earmarked taxes are inadequate.     

对附加福利征税的探讨

附加福利在劳动报酬体系中的地位越来越高，从公平和效率角度出发，许多国家开征了福利附加税。我国目前不宜开征独立的福利附加税，而应根据附加福利的目的确定征免界限，通过完善个人所得税的办法解决问题。     

新西兰、澳大利亚的公路基金、燃油税及其借鉴

随着我国对公路乱收费进行整治的呼声的高涨,燃油税的开征及相关制度的建立被提上议事日程.国外一般也称燃油税为燃油消费税,它主要是对耗用各种燃油(主要是汽油、柴油)并在各种公路上行驶的机动车辆征收,以筹集公路建设资金.在此,我们主要介绍新西兰及澳大利亚的相关制度及最新做法,并结合我国的具体情况对公路资金筹集和燃油税等相关问题进行一点探讨.     

农村税费改革中的乡镇财政困难问题研究

农村税费改革中凸现出的乡镇财政困难现象是规范国家与农民收入分配关系中必然要经历的一种"阵痛";解决乡镇财政困难问题绝不能急于求成,必须注意解困目标与对策的协调性.     

Debt, Death and Taxes

Does the level of government debt affect living standards and if so, to what extent? We quantify the impact of the U.S. federal debt using an open economy overlapping generations model in which consumers have long but finite lifetimes. A demographic structure allows fiscal policy changes to have different effects on different agents, and reveals the linkages between public debt, output and international trade. We find that reducing the debt has relatively modest impacts on aggregates, while reducing government spending substantially raises U.S. incomes and welfare. Therefore, this paper contributes to the current debate regarding whether U.S. federal government budget surpluses should be used to retire government debt.     

Debt,Taxes, and Banks

Understanding the impact on banks’ capital structures of tax biases toward debt finance is critical to assessing policy responses to socially excessive bank leverage—but there is no empirical evidence of its extent. Guided by some simple theory, this paper explores this impact for a large panel of banks in 82 countries. On average, the tax sensitivity of banks’ leverage proves significant and about as large as for nonfinancial firms. Somewhat counterintuitively, but as the theory suggests, taxation has little impact on the use of hybrids. Banks holding smaller equity buffers and larger banks are noticeably less sensitive to tax.     

Bank Taxes,Leverage, and Risk

We use staggered changes in the taxation of banks by U.S. states to show how banks adjust their capital structure in response to taxes. A one percentage point increase in the income tax rate leads to a decrease in the ratio of equity to total assets of 15 basis points. The effect is symmetric for tax increases and decreases but heterogeneous in that small and strongly capitalized banks react more. In response to taxes, banks also adjust their assets consistent with regulatory arbitrage activities intended to keep down regulatory risk measures, thereby keeping regulatory ratios at acceptable levels despite increasing leverage. Finally, higher taxes may decrease banks’ ability to survive crises.     

Taxes,Theft, and Firm Performance

This paper examines the interaction between income diversion and firm performance. Using unique Russian banking transaction data, I identify 42,483 spacemen, fly‐by‐night firms created specifically for income diversion. Next, I build a direct measure of income diversion for 45,429 companies and show that it is negatively related to firm performance. I identify the main reason for the observed effect as managerial diversion rather than tax evasion per se. I further show that stricter tax enforcement can improve firm performance: a one standard deviation increase in tax enforcement corresponds to an increase in the annual revenue growth rate of 2.6%.     

Options,Taxes, and Ex-Dividend Day Behavior

A novel way of estimating the expected as opposed to the actual share price fall-off is developed using option prices. This method is applied to the UK Traded Options Market using data from 1979 to 1984. The results show that: (a) the average expected fall-off implicit in option prices is around 55 to 60% of the dividend and significantly different from it. The fall-off also varied inversely with the dividend yield, which is consistent with the prediction of the “tax clientele hypothesis.” (b) The estimates of the expected fall-off were not significantly different from the actual fall-off. (c) Finally, the results imply that the usual assumption made in valuing options on dividend-paying stocks, that the fall-off is equal to the dividend, would lead to downward-biased estimates of the option value.     

基金业绩、投资者有限注意力与基金申购

投资者注意力作为一种稀缺的认知资源对资产定价、投资决策等有重要影响。本文使用百度指数的用户关注度作为注意力的代理变量,考察了投资者有限注意力对基金投资决策的影响．分析了基金市场中影响投资者注意力的因素。当投资者购买基金时,由于面对可供选择的庞大数量基金．投资者的有限注意力将影响基金申购,而且有证据表明投资者注意到基金以后经过两到五周的时间才会中购基金;当投资者卖出基金时,由于仅面对少数几只己经买入的基金,投资者注意力不会影响基金赎回。此外,本文发现短期业绩较好和短期波动较大的基金更能吸引投资者的注意。同时基金的营销手段对于吸引投资者的注意力起到了良好的作用。     

Stock Returns, Dividend Yields, and Taxes

Using an improved measure of a common stock's annualized dividend yield, we document that risk-adjusted NYSE stock returns increase in dividend yield during the period from 1963 to 1994. This relation between return and yield is robust to various specifications of multifactor asset pricing models that incorporate the Fama–French factors. The magnitude of the yield effect is too large to be explained by a tax penalty on dividend income and is not explained by previously documented anomalies. Interestingly, the effect is primarily driven by smaller market capitalization stocks and zero-yield stocks.     

Taxes,Default Risk,and Yield Spreads

This paper develops a model of bond prices and yield spreads that incorporates the effect of both taxes and differences in default probabilities. The tax loss consequences of default are recognized. Traditionally, tax-free (municipal) bond yields have been viewed as linearly related to taxable yields with a slope coefficient equal to one minus the tax rate and the intercept representing differences in default risk. While our model supports the linearity assumption, it implies that the slope and intercept are both functions of both the break-even tax rate and the default probability(ies). Clientele effects among both municipal and taxable bonds are demonstrated. Finally, the implied marginal tax rates and the implied default probabilities are estimated for different categories of municipal bonds.     

Taxes, Financing Decisions, and Firm Value

We use cross-sectional regressions to study how a firm's value is related to dividends and debt. With a good control for profitability, the regressions can measure how the taxation of dividends and debt affects firm value. Simple tax hypotheses say that value is negatively related to dividends and positively related to debt. We find the opposite. We infer that dividends and debt convey information about profitability (expected net cash flows) missed by a wide range of control variables. This information about profitability obscures any tax effects of financing decisions.     

Taxes,Inflation and Corporate Financial Policy

This paper examines inflation-induced distortions in personal and corporate income taxes and discusses the implications for corporate dividend and financial structure policies and for shareholder unanimity. The tax effects relating to capital gains and debt interest cause changes in aggregate corporate borrowing and lead to equilibrium tax relationships which differ from the zero-inflation tax relationships.     

Financial Transaction Taxes,Market Composition,and Liquidity

We use the introduction of a financial transaction tax (FTT) in France in 2012 to test competing theories on its impact. We find no support for the idea that an FTT improves market quality by affecting the composition of trading volume. Instead, our results are in line with the hypothesis that a lower trading volume reduces liquidity and in turn market quality. Consistent with theories of asset pricing under transaction costs, we document a shift in security holdings from short‐term to long‐term investors. Finally, we find that moderate aggregate effects on market quality can mask large adjustments made by individual agents.     

Loanable Funds, Monitoring and Banking

This paper studies financial intermediation in a general equilibriumoverlapping generations model. Indivisible investment projects combine withinformational imperfections to create a (hidden action) moral hazard problemand introduce a role for third-party monitoring. Agency costs at theintermediary level are also considered. Under some conditions, monitors canbe viewed as banks facing a non-trivial portfolio diversification problem.Equilibria are derived in which a large nationwide bank coexists with anumber of community-regional banks, a structure of strong empiricalrelevance. Policies such as a mandatory reserve requirement are shown tohave substantial effects on the levels of investment in the economy.     

Employee Stock Options, Corporate Taxes, and Debt Policy

We find that employee stock option deductions lead to large aggregate tax savings for Nasdaq 100 and S&P 100 firms and also affect corporate marginal tax rates. For Nasdaq firms, including the effect of options reduces the estimated median marginal tax rate from 31% to 5%. For S&P firms, in contrast, option deductions do not affect marginal tax rates to a large degree. Our evidence suggests that option deductions are important nondebt tax shields and that option deductions substitute for interest deductions in corporate capital structure decisions, explaining in part why some firms use so little debt.     

Intercorporate Ownership,Taxes, and Corporate Payout Choices*

This paper examines whether corporate payout choices (dividends or share repurchases) are associated with intercorporate ownership in a firm. Using the System for Electronic Document Analysis and Retrieval (SEDAR) and the Inter‐Corporate Ownership (ICO) database from Statistics Canada, I find that intercorporate ownership is positively associated with a firm’s propensity to pay dividends and negatively associated with a firm’s propensity to repurchase shares. The findings are robust to the endogeneity of intercorporate ownership and the inclusion of various control variables such as firm size, risk, liquidity, growth, and profitability.