A theory of capital gains taxation and business turnover

We present a theory concerning the realization of capital gains where ownership and control are linked as in Holmes and Schmitz (J. Pol. Econ. 103: 1005–1038, 1995). The model developed is a version of a Lucas-tree economy in which the productivity of a technology depends on the ownership of the technology. The existence and uniqueness of equilibrium follow from the Contraction Mapping Theorem. The theory implies that impediments to asset trading, such as capital gains taxation, negatively affect production efficiency. Moreover, we calibrate the model economy to U.S. data on small-business turnover and find that indexing deductions for inflation is capable of increasing capital-gains tax revenues. We thank an anonymous referee for helpful comments, and well as Tom Holmes, Ed Prescott, Jim Schmitz and Neil Wallace for insightful conversations. Cavalcanti is grateful for financial support from CNPq, as well as the hospitality from the University of Toronto during his visiting appointment at the Department of Economics in 2006. Erosa acknowledges the support from the Institute for Policy Analysis at the University of Toronto and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.