A central point in the recent debate about Social Security in the United States has been the extent to which the federal government should take significant positions in the equity market. But, as this paper shows, the government already has a much more significant, if implicit position in the U.S. equity market through its claim to future tax revenues. Using estimates of the sensitivity of federal tax revenues to stock market returns, I calculate the implicit equity position of the federal government, defined as the equity position that would be as sensitive to the stock market as the present value of federal revenues. Although standard errors are large, point estimates indicate that the implicit federal equity position exceeds the size of the stock market itself, a result that is consistent with the fact that revenues from all sources, not just taxes on corporate source income, are responsive to stock market returns.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
10291.
Length: Date of creation: Feb 2004 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:10291
Note: CF PE Contact details of provider: Postal: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A. Phone: 617-868-3900 Email: Web page: http://www.nber.org More information through EDIRC
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: ().
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)