IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/13560.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Financiers vs. Engineers: Should the Financial Sector be Taxed or Subsidized?

Author

Listed:
  • Thomas Philippon

Abstract

I study the allocation of human capital in an economy with production externalities, financial constraints and career choices. Agents choose to become entrepreneurs, workers or financiers. Entrepreneurship has positive externalities, but innovators face borrowing constraints and require the services of financiers in order to invest efficiently. When investment and education subsidies are chosen optimally, I find that the financial sector should be taxed in exactly the same way as the non-financial sector. When direct subsidies to investment and scientific education are not feasible, giving a preferred tax treatment to the financial sector can improve welfare by increasing aggregate investment in research and development.

Suggested Citation

  • Thomas Philippon, 2007. "Financiers vs. Engineers: Should the Financial Sector be Taxed or Subsidized?," NBER Working Papers 13560, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:13560
    Note: CF EFG PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w13560.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Romer, Paul M, 1986. "Increasing Returns and Long-run Growth," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(5), pages 1002-1037, October.
    2. Khan, Aubhik, 2001. "Financial Development And Economic Growth," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 5(3), pages 413-433, June.
    3. Jeremy Greenwood & Juan M. Sanchez & Cheng Wang, 2010. "Financing Development: The Role of Information Costs," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(4), pages 1875-1891, September.
    4. Bengt Holmstrom & Jean Tirole, 1997. "Financial Intermediation, Loanable Funds, and The Real Sector," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(3), pages 663-691.
    5. Duffie Darrell & Rahi Rohit, 1995. "Financial Market Innovation and Security Design: An Introduction," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 65(1), pages 1-42, February.
    6. Douglas W. Diamond, 1984. "Financial Intermediation and Delegated Monitoring," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 51(3), pages 393-414.
    7. Kevin M. Murphy & Andrei Shleifer & Robert W. Vishny, 1991. "The Allocation of Talent: Implications for Growth," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(2), pages 503-530.
    8. Robert G. King & Ross Levine, 1993. "Finance and Growth: Schumpeter Might Be Right," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 108(3), pages 717-737.
    9. Greenwood, Jeremy & Jovanovic, Boyan, 1990. "Financial Development, Growth, and the Distribution of Income," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(5), pages 1076-1107, October.
    10. Thomas Philippon, 2007. "Why Has the U.S. Financial Sector Grown so Much? The Role of Corporate Finance," NBER Working Papers 13405, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. K. J. Arrow, 1971. "The Economic Implications of Learning by Doing," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: F. H. Hahn (ed.), Readings in the Theory of Growth, chapter 11, pages 131-149, Palgrave Macmillan.
    12. Baumol, William J., 1996. "Entrepreneurship: Productive, unproductive, and destructive," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 3-22, January.
    13. Lucas, Robert Jr., 1988. "On the mechanics of economic development," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 3-42, July.
    14. Valerie R. Bencivenga & Bruce D. Smith, 1991. "Financial Intermediation and Endogenous Growth," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 58(2), pages 195-209.
    15. Thomas Philippon & Ariell Reshef, 2007. "Skill Biased Financial Development: Education, Wages and Occupations in the U.S. Financial Sector," NBER Working Papers 13437, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Boyd, John H. & Prescott, Edward C., 1986. "Financial intermediary-coalitions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 211-232, April.
    17. repec:cup:macdyn:v:5:y:2001:i:3:p:413-33 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Levine, Ross, 1991. "Stock Markets, Growth, and Tax Policy," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 46(4), pages 1445-1465, September.
    19. Xavier Freixas & Jean-Charles Rochet, 1997. "Microeconomics of Banking," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262061937, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cecchetti, Stephen & Kharroubi, Enisse, 2015. "Why does financial sector growth crowd out real economic growth?," CEPR Discussion Papers 10642, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. Beck, Thorsten & Degryse, Hans & Kneer, Christiane, 2014. "Is more finance better? Disentangling intermediation and size effects of financial systems," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 10(C), pages 50-64.
    3. Creel, Jérôme & Hubert, Paul & Labondance, Fabien, 2015. "Financial stability and economic performance," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 25-40.
    4. Thomas Philippon & Ariell Reshef, 2007. "Skill Biased Financial Development: Education, Wages and Occupations in the U.S. Financial Sector," NBER Working Papers 13437, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. NYU-Stern, 2008. "Why Has the US Financial Sector Grown So Much?," 2008 Meeting Papers 714, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    6. Stephen Cecchetti & Enisse Kharroubi, 2012. "Reassessing the impact of finance on growth," BIS Working Papers 381, Bank for International Settlements.
    7. Pierre Cahuc & Edouard Challe, 2012. "Produce Or Speculate? Asset Bubbles, Occupational Choice, And Efficiency," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 53(4), pages 1105-1131, November.
    8. Thomas Philippon & Ariell Reshef, 2009. "Wages and Human Capital in the U.S. Financial Industry: 1909-2006," NBER Working Papers 14644, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/5euk7d0f8t81prfu1k2sspdcok is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Kneer, E.C., 2013. "Essays on the size of the financial aector, financial liberalization and growth," Other publications TiSEM e0f0b672-ce74-40a3-8222-2, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    11. Jérôme Creel & Paul Hubert & Fabien Labondance, 2013. "Financial stability and economic performance," Documents de Travail de l'OFCE 2013-24, Observatoire Francais des Conjonctures Economiques (OFCE).
    12. Crettez, Bertrand & Hayek, Naila & Morhaim, Lisa, 2017. "Optimal growth with investment enhancing labor," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 23-36.
    13. Ravi Kashyap, 2016. "Financial Services, Economic Growth and Well-Being: A Four-Pronged Study," Papers 1603.00991, arXiv.org, revised May 2017.
    14. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/f6h8764enu2lskk9p5296ie95 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Hamid Boustanifar & Everett Grant & Ariell Reshef, 2016. "Wages and human capital in finance: international evidence, 1970-2005," Globalization Institute Working Papers 266, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Thomas Philippon, 2007. "Why Has the U.S. Financial Sector Grown so Much? The Role of Corporate Finance," NBER Working Papers 13405, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Ekaterina Ponomareva & Alexandra Bozhechkova & Alexandr Knobel, 2012. "Factors of Economic Growth," Published Papers 172, Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy, revised 2013.
    3. Jeremy Greenwood & Juan M. Sanchez & Cheng Wang, 2010. "Financing Development: The Role of Information Costs," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(4), pages 1875-1891, September.
    4. Laeven, Luc & Levine, Ross & Michalopoulos, Stelios, 2015. "Financial innovation and endogenous growth," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 1-24.
    5. Levine, Ross & Zervos, Sara, 1998. "Stock Markets, Banks, and Economic Growth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(3), pages 537-558, June.
    6. Alessandro Giovannini & Maurizio Iacopetta & Raoul Minetti, 2013. "Financial Markets, Banks, and Growth : Disentangling the links," Revue de l'OFCE, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 0(5), pages 105-147.
    7. de la Fuente, Angel & Marin, JoseMaria, 1996. "Innovation, bank monitoring, and endogenous financial development," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 269-301, October.
    8. Ductor, Lorenzo & Grechyna, Daryna, 2015. "Financial development, real sector, and economic growth," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 393-405.
    9. Christie Dike, 2016. "Stock Market Efficiency Promotes Economic Development: Empirical Evidence from Africa," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 6(3), pages 1287-1298.
    10. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/6o65lgig8d0qcro9p14jk1001 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Laurent Cavenaile & Christian Gengenbach & Franz Palm, 2014. "Stock Markets, Banks and Long Run Economic Growth: A Panel Cointegration-Based Analysis," De Economist, Springer, vol. 162(1), pages 19-40, March.
    12. Ross Levine & Norman Loayza & Thorsten Beck, 2002. "Financial Intermediation and Growth: Causality and Causes," Central Banking, Analysis, and Economic Policies Book Series, in: Leonardo Hernández & Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel & Norman Loayza (Series Editor) & Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel (Se (ed.),Banking, Financial Integration, and International Crises, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 2, pages 031-084, Central Bank of Chile.
    13. James B. Ang, 2008. "A Survey Of Recent Developments In The Literature Of Finance And Growth," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(3), pages 536-576, July.
    14. Satyananda Sahoo, 2014. "Financial Intermediation and Growth: Bank-Based versus Market-Based Systems," Margin: The Journal of Applied Economic Research, National Council of Applied Economic Research, vol. 8(2), pages 93-114, May.
    15. Shankha Chakraborty, 2019. "Financial Deepening," Arthaniti: Journal of Economic Theory and Practice, , vol. 18(2), pages 111-137, December.
    16. Siddiki, Jalal Uddin & Auerbach, Paul, 2000. "Economic development, finance and liberalisation: a survey and some unresolved issues," Economics Discussion Papers 2000-6, School of Economics, Kingston University London.
    17. Razzak, Weshah & El Bentour, M, 2020. "The Transitional Dynamic of Finance Led Growth," MPRA Paper 98482, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Fufa, Tolina & Kim, Jaebeom, 2018. "Stock markets, banks, and economic growth: Evidence from more homogeneous panels," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 504-517.
    19. Gehringer, Agnieszka, 2013. "Financial liberalization, financial development and productivity growth: An overview," Economics Discussion Papers 2013-46, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    20. Alberto Bucci & Simone Marsiglio, 2019. "Financial development and economic growth: long‐run equilibrium and transitional dynamics," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 66(3), pages 331-359, July.
    21. Charles O. Manasseh & Johnson I. Okoh & Felicia C. Abada & Jonathan E. Ogbuabor & Felix C. Alio & Adedoyin I. Lawal & Ifeoma C. Nwakoby & Onyinye J. Asogwa, 2021. "Impact of Financial Intermediaries on Nigerian Economic Growth," International Journal of Financial Research, International Journal of Financial Research, Sciedu Press, vol. 12(1), pages 348-356, January.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E2 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment
    • G18 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Government Policy and Regulation
    • G2 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services
    • H2 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue
    • O3 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights
    • O41 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - One, Two, and Multisector Growth Models
    • O43 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Institutions and Growth

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:13560. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.