IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ysm/somwrk/ysm408.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Could Higher Taxes Increase the Long-Run Demand for Capital?: Theory and Evidence for Chile

Author

Listed:
  • Eduardo M. Engel

    (Yale University, Faculty of Arts & Sciences, Department of Economics (Box 8268))

  • Alvaro Bustos

    (Princeton University, Department of Economics)

  • Alexander Galetovic

    (Universidad de Chili, Center of Applied Economics (CEA))

Abstract

On theoretical grounds alone, there is no a priori reason why higher taxes should reduce the desired capital stock, since a tax increase reduces marginal returns but also increases depreciation and interest payment allowances. Using a panel of Chilean corporations, this paper estimates a long-run demand for capital valid for a general adjustment-cost structure. Changes in the corporate tax rate are found to have no effect on the long run demand for capital. Furthermore, when making investment decisions, firms ignore the marginal rates paid by their stockholders, suggesting the presence of a corporate veil.

Suggested Citation

  • Eduardo M. Engel & Alvaro Bustos & Alexander Galetovic, 2004. "Could Higher Taxes Increase the Long-Run Demand for Capital?: Theory and Evidence for Chile," Yale School of Management Working Papers ysm408, Yale School of Management.
    • Handle: RePEc:ysm:somwrk:ysm408
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=427080
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Chang-Tai Hsieh & Jonathan A. Parker, 2007. "Taxes and Growth in a Financially Underdeveloped Country: Evidence from the Chilean Investment Boom," Economía Journal, The Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association - LACEA, vol. 0(Fall 2007), pages 1-53, August.
    2. Jorgenson, D.W., 1992. "Tax Reform and the Cost of Capital : An International Comparison," Harvard Institute of Economic Research Working Papers 1621, Harvard - Institute of Economic Research.
    3. Engel, Eduardo M. R. A. & Galetovic, Alexander & Raddatz, Claudio E., 1999. "Taxes and income distribution in Chile: some unpleasant redistributive arithmetic," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(1), pages 155-192, June.
    4. Lucas, Robert E, Jr, 1990. "Supply-Side Economics: An Analytical Review," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 42(2), pages 293-316, April.
    5. Mervyn A. King, 1974. "Taxation and the Cost of Capital," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 41(1), pages 21-35.
    6. Giuseppe Bertola & Ricardo J. Caballero, 1990. "Kinked Adjustment Costs and Aggregate Dynamics," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1990, Volume 5, pages 237-296, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Caballero, Ricardo J, 1994. "Small Sample Bias and Adjustment Costs," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 76(1), pages 52-58, February.
    8. Alan J. Auerbach, 1983. "Corporate Taxation in the United States," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 14(2), pages 451-514.
    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. Rodrigo Cerda N. & José Ignacio Llodrá V., 2017. "Impuestos corporativos y capital: veintiséis años de evidencia en empresas," Journal Economía Chilena (The Chilean Economy), Central Bank of Chile, vol. 20(1), pages 050-071, April.
    2. Rodrigo Cerda & Felipe Larraín, 2005. "Inversión Privada e Impuestos Corporativos: Evidencia para Chile," Latin American Journal of Economics-formerly Cuadernos de Economía, Instituto de Economía. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile., vol. 42(126), pages 257-281.
    3. Panousi, Vasia, 2009. "Capital Taxation with Entrepreneurial Risk," MPRA Paper 24237, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Cerda, Rodrigo & Fuentes, J. Rodrigo & García, Gonzalo & Llodrá, José Ignacio, 2015. "Understanding Domestic Savings in Chile," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 7254, Inter-American Development Bank.
    5. Pham, Anh, 2020. "Effects of temporary corporate income tax cuts: Evidence from Vietnam," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    6. Ramón E. López & Pablo Gutiérrez Cubillos & Eugenio Figueroa, 2020. "The Tax Paradox and Weak Tax Neutrality," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 86(3), pages 1150-1169, January.
    7. Cristobal Marshall, 2010. "Is the Tax Credit for SME in Chile an Effective Policy to Boost Investment?," CID Working Papers 46, Center for International Development at Harvard University.
    8. Carlos Garcia & Jorge Restrepo, 2007. "How Effective is Government Spending in a Small Open Economy with Distortionary Taxes," ILADES-UAH Working Papers inv188, Universidad Alberto Hurtado/School of Economics and Business.
    9. Jose De Gregorio, 2004. "Economic Growth in Chile: Evidence, Sources and Prospects," Working Papers Central Bank of Chile 298, Central Bank of Chile.
    10. Rodrigo Cerda & Felipe Larrain, 2010. "Corporate taxes and the demand for labor and capital in developing countries," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 34(2), pages 187-201, February.
    11. Yongzheng Liu & Jorge Martinez-Vazquez, 2015. "Growth–Inequality Tradeoff in the Design of Tax Structure: Evidence from a Large Panel of Countries," Pacific Economic Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(2), pages 323-345, May.
    12. Cai, Jing & Harrison, Ann, 2011. "The value-added tax reform puzzle," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5788, The World Bank.
    13. Rodrigo A. Cerda & Diego Saravia, 2009. "Corporate Tax, Firm Destruction and Capital Stock Accumulation: Evidence From Chilean Plants, 1979-2004," Working Papers Central Bank of Chile 521, Central Bank of Chile.
    14. Chávez, Ricardo & García, Carlos J., 2016. "Reforma tributaria en fases," El Trimestre Económico, Fondo de Cultura Económica, vol. 0(330), pages .275-310, abril-jun.
    15. Rodrigo Cerda & J. Rodrigo Fuentes & Gonzalo García & José Ignacio Llodrá, 2015. "Understanding Domestic Savings in Chile," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 91437, Inter-American Development Bank.

    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. Caballero, Ricardo J., 1999. "Aggregate investment," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 12, pages 813-862, Elsevier.
    2. Luis Alvarez & Vesa Kanniainen & Jan Södersten, 1999. "Why is the Corporation Tax Not Neutral?. Anticipated Tax Reform, Investment Spurts and Corporate Borrowing," FinanzArchiv: Public Finance Analysis, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 56(3/4), pages 285-285, July.
    3. Roland Benabou, 2002. "Tax and Education Policy in a Heterogeneous-Agent Economy: What Levels of Redistribution Maximize Growth and Efficiency?," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(2), pages 481-517, March.
    4. Casey B. Mulligan, 2002. "Capital Tax Incidence: First Impressions from the Time Series," NBER Working Papers 9374, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Casey B. Mulligan, 2002. "Capital, Interest, and Aggregate Intertemporal Substitution," NBER Working Papers 9373, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Alan Auerbach & Michael P Devereux & Helen Simpson, 2007. "Taxing corporate income," Working Papers 0705, Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation.
    7. Rodrigo Cerda N. & José Ignacio Llodrá V., 2017. "Impuestos corporativos y capital: veintiséis años de evidencia en empresas," Journal Economía Chilena (The Chilean Economy), Central Bank of Chile, vol. 20(1), pages 050-071, April.
    8. Cassou, Steven P., 1995. "Optimal tax rules in a dynamic stochastic economy with capital," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 19(5-7), pages 1165-1197.
    9. Tobing, Elwin, 2011. "Taxation, human capital formation, and long-run growth with private investment in education," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 48-60, February.
    10. Lin, Hwan C. & Russo, Benjamin, 1999. "A Taxation Policy Toward Capital, Technology and Long-Run Growth," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 463-491, July.
    11. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 2002. "Political economics and public finance," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 24, pages 1549-1659, Elsevier.
    12. Wen, Jean-Francois & Love, David R. F., 1998. "Evaluating Tax Reforms in a Monetary Economy," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 487-508, July.
    13. Aleksandar Vasilev, 2015. "Welfare gains from the adoption of proportional taxation in a general-equilibrium model with a grey economy: the case of Bulgaria’s 2008 flat tax reform," Economic Change and Restructuring, Springer, vol. 48(2), pages 169-185, May.
    14. Cristóbal Huneeus & Andrea Repetto, 2005. "The Dynamics of Earnings in Chile," Central Banking, Analysis, and Economic Policies Book Series, in: Jorge Restrepo & Andrea Tokman R. & Norman Loayza (Series Editor) & Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel (Series Edi (ed.),Labor Markets and Institutions, edition 1, volume 8, chapter 12, pages 383-410, Central Bank of Chile.
    15. Krause, M.U., 2002. "Inter-Industry Wage Differentials and Job Flows," Discussion Paper 2002-3, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    16. Balázs Égert, 2018. "Regulation, Institutions and Aggregate Investment: New Evidence from OECD Countries," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 29(2), pages 415-449, April.
    17. Alan J. Auerbach, 2006. "The Future of Capital Income Taxation," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 27(4), pages 399-420, December.
    18. James B. Davies & Jinli Zeng & Jie Zhang, 2009. "Time‐consistent taxation in a dynastic family model with human and physical capital and a balanced government budget," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 42(3), pages 1023-1049, August.
    19. Honerkamp, Josef & Moog, Stefan & Raffelhüschen, Bernd, 2004. "Earlier or Later: A General Equilibrium Analysis of Bringing Forward an Already Announced Tax Reform," Discussion Papers 123, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Institut für Finanzwissenschaft.
    20. Claudio A. Agostini & Philip H. Brown, 2010. "Local Distributional Effects Of Government Cash Transfers In Chile," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 56(2), pages 366-388, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Adjustment Costs; Corporate Veil; Demand for Capital; Depreciation Allowances; User Cost of Capital;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H32 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - Firm
    • D21 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Theory

    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:ysm:somwrk:ysm408. 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/smyalus.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.