Capital, corporate income taxes, and catastrophe insurance

We provide estimates of the equity capital needed and the resulting tax costs incurred when supplying catastrophe insurance/reinsurance using a partial equilibrium model that incorporates a specific loss distribution for US catastrophe losses. After consideration of insurer investment in tax-exempt securities, tax loss carry-back/forward provisions, and personal taxes, our results imply that the tax costs of equity finance alone have a substantial effect on the cost of supplying catastrophe reinsurance. These results help explain a variety of industry developments that reduce tax costs. Also, when coupled with non-tax costs of capital, these results help explain the limited scope of catastrophe insurance/reinsurance.     

我国个人所得税后续改革中必须考虑的若干问题

我国工资薪金个人所得税扣除额宜实行分地区浮动制度,而扣除额的调整必须与扣除方式的改革相结合才具有实质意义。从目前的征管实践来看,加强个人所得税管理、有效控制税源是确保改革目标实现的关键。此外,单纯追求个人所得税的公平功能而忽视其效率的作用,对我国社会政治经济的发展将产生不利的影响,也不符合改革的目标。     

基于政策目标的存款利息得税的有效性分析

我国1999年开征的存款利息所得税是一次典型意义上的相机调控行为,短期内达到了预期的调控目标。但随着政策持续时间的延长,政策刚性对社会公平和经济长期增长的负面影响也在逐步增强。而且相机性财政政策仅仅是一项短期政策,不应该被长期实施。相机性政策的长期实施不仅会使短期的政策效应丧失,而且政策刚性产生的负面影响将会不断扩大。对利息所得税而言,如果不能将其纳入个人所得税改革的整体框架内统筹安排,则应考虑尽快退出。     

中国农村金融发展对城乡收入差距的影响--基于1978-2004年数据的检验

大多数研究表明,改革开放以来,中国整体金融发展显著扩大了城乡收入差距,同时,它们从城乡金融发展不平衡角度进行了理论阐释。本文则从农村自身经济发展层面出发运用1978-2004年的相关数据分析了农村金融发展与城乡收入差距之间的关系,结果显示:农村金融发展扩大了城乡收入差距,究其原因主要是农村资金的不断外流和非正规金融的不规范发展,加剧了城乡收入差距的扩大。现实的出路是遏制农村资金外流,提供更多的农村正规金融资源;规范非正规金融发展,防范农村金融风险。     

公允价值的困境解析及其对策

公允价值的运用在国外已成为一种趋势,在我国却并不顺利.文章认为公允价值在理论上是可行的,尽管实际运用中,由于使用者的逐利动机、会计准则制度不完善、相关的法律法规不健全及执法不严等,导致在关联交易、非货币交易、债务重组和资产减值中出现了很多问题,但是通过引入全面收益并且建立良好的实施环境,它也就具有了实务上的可行性.     

改进我国个人工资薪金所得税的思考

个人工资薪金所得税是我国个人所得税的主体。我国现行个人工资薪金所得税的税制设计,在一定程度上制约着其功能的发挥。建议在完善我国个人工资薪金所得税功能定位的基础上,结合我国城乡居民的实际收入状况,对个人工资薪金所得税做进一步改进。     

The Impact of SFAS No. 114 on the Linear Information Dynamic for Commercial Banks

Increase (decrease) in loan loss provisions would decrease (increases) bank earnings, but increase (decreases) regulatory capital. Previous studies have separately documented earnings and capital management behavior via loan loss provisions by commercial banks. However, it is difficult to isolate a bank's demand for increasing earnings from its demand for regulatory capital because earnings is a source of capital. Based on the objective bank function, this study investigates the impact of SFAS No. 114 on the information content of loan loss provisions in relation to both earnings quality and capital adequacy in a linear information dynamic framework. Test results show that the association between market value with loan loss provisions became significantly stronger for commercial banks in the post- than in the pre-adoption period. As a result, SFAS No. 114 is also found to positively affect the association of market value with both bank earnings and regulatory capital through the clean surplus relation because of the higher value relevance of loan loss provisions. The findings thus provide empirical evidence that SFAS No. 114 has significantly complemented banking regulations in enhancing (reducing) the (dispersion from the) accounting measurement construct of loan loss provisions.     

Reduced Tax Progressivity in Norway in the Nineties: The Effect from Tax Changes

The inequality in pre-tax income increased in Norway in the 1990s, while the concentration of taxes remained largely unaltered. This means that tax progressivity has decreased in the period, as measured by summary indices of tax progressivity. In this paper I analyze individual income data to ascertain whether tax changes in the period can explain the observed decrease in tax progressivity. As marginal tax rates at high income levels have been substantially reduced in the period, for instance through the tax reform of 1992, it is expected that tax changes may have influenced the degree of inequality in pre-tax incomes. This behavioral effect is examined by deriving estimates of the elasticity of gross income with respect to the net-of-tax rate, obtained from various panel data regressions. The tax changes may also have shifted the distributional burden of taxes for unaltered level of pre-tax income inequality. In order to identify this (direct) effect of tax-law alterations, the same fixed distribution of pre-tax income is exposed to various tax-laws in the period.     

Evidence on the efficacy of interest-rate risk disclosures by commercial banks

This paper documents evidence on the efficacy of maturity-gap disclosures of commercial banks in indicating their net interest income that is exposed to interest-rate risk. For the large sample of banks that filed call reports from 1990 to 1997, a period that includes a wide range of interest rate movements, we find that (i) one-year maturity gap measures are significantly related to the one-year- and three-years-ahead change in net interest income, (ii) fixed-rate and variable-rate instruments differ in explanatory ability, and (iii) the one-to-five-year aggregate gap measures also have some power in explaining three-year-ahead changes in net interest income. These findings hold after controlling for the ex post growth in assets as well as the amount of rate-sensitive assets and liabilities (a competing set of explanatory variables). Because the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)'s [Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), (1997). Disclosure of accounting policies for derivative financial instruments and derivative commodity instruments and disclosure of qualitative and quantitative information about market risk inherent in derivative financial instruments, other financial instruments, and derivative commodity instruments. Release Nos. 33-7386; 3438223; IC-22487; FR-48; International Series No. 1047; File No. S7-35-95 (January 31, 1997), Washington, DC] tabular disclosures are finer than maturity-gap data, our findings mitigate concerns about the usefulness of the SEC's market-risk-disclosure requirements. Furthermore, they suggest contrary to the claims of certain banks that the omission of prepayment and early withdrawal risk from gap measures does not totally compromise the ability of gap data to indicate interest-risk exposures.     

Who Receives Medicaid in Old Age? Rules and Reality

Medicaid is a government programme that also provides health insurance to the elderly who have few assets and either low income or catastrophic health care expenses. We ask how the Medicaid rules map into the reality of Medicaid recipiency, and we ask what other observable characteristics are important to determine who ends up on Medicaid. The data show that both singles and couples with high retirement income can end up on Medicaid at very advanced ages. We find that, conditioning on a large number of observable characteristics, including those that directly relate to Medicaid eligibility criteria, single women are more likely to end up on Medicaid – so are non‐white people, but, surprisingly, their higher recipiency is concentrated in the higher income percentiles. We also find that people with low incomes who have a high‐school diploma or higher degree are much less likely to end up receiving Medicaid than their less‐educated counterparts. All of these effects are large and depend on retirement income in a very non‐linear way.