IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/arqudp/158.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The effect of straight-line and accelerated depreciation rules on risky investment decisions: An experimental study

Author

Listed:
  • Ackermann, Hagen
  • Fochmann, Martin

Abstract

The aim of this study is to analyze how depreciation rules influence the decision behavior of investors. For this purpose, we conduct a laboratory experiment in which participants decide on the composition of an asset portfolio in different choice situations. Using an experimental environment with different payment periods, we show that accelerated compared to straight-line depreciation can increase the willingness to invest as hypothesized by theory. Additionally, we are able to replicate the unexpected finding of Ackermann et al. (2013) - that introducing a subsidy leads to a lower willingness to take risk although the net returns are kept constant - with our setting which is different to their experimental environment.

Suggested Citation

  • Ackermann, Hagen & Fochmann, Martin, 2014. "The effect of straight-line and accelerated depreciation rules on risky investment decisions: An experimental study," arqus Discussion Papers in Quantitative Tax Research 158, arqus - Arbeitskreis Quantitative Steuerlehre.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:arqudp:158
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/96246/1/783728344.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Martin Feldstein, 1983. "Inflation, Tax Rules, and Investment: Some Econometric Evidence," NBER Chapters, in: Inflation, Tax Rules, and Capital Formation, pages 243-286, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Martin Feldstein, 1987. "The Effects of Taxation on Capital Accumulation," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number feld87-1, March.
    3. Jorgenson, Dale W, 1996. "Empirical Studies of Depreciation," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 34(1), pages 24-42, January.
    4. Djanali, Iwan & Sheehan-Connor, Damien, 2012. "Tax affinity hypothesis: Do we really hate paying taxes?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 758-775.
    5. Raj Chetty & Adam Looney & Kory Kroft, 2009. "Salience and Taxation: Theory and Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(4), pages 1145-1177, September.
    6. de Bartolome, Charles A. M., 1995. "Which tax rate do people use: Average or marginal?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(1), pages 79-96, January.
    7. Sausgruber, Rupert & Tyran, Jean-Robert, 2011. "Are we taxing ourselves?: How deliberation and experience shape voting on taxes," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(1-2), pages 164-176, February.
    8. Jackson, Scott B. & (Kelvin) Liu, Xiaotao & Cecchini, Mark, 2009. "Economic consequences of firms' depreciation method choice: Evidence from capital investments," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 54-68, October.
    9. Ackermann, Hagen & Fochmann, Martin & Mihm, Benedikt, 2013. "Biased effects of taxes and subsidies on portfolio choices," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 120(1), pages 23-26.
    10. Naomi E. Feldman & Bradley J. Ruffle, 2012. "The impact of tax exclusive and inclusive prices on demand," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2012-50, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    11. Fochmann, Martin & Kiesewetter, Dirk & Sadrieh, Abdolkarim, 2012. "Investment behavior and the biased perception of limited loss deduction in income taxation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 81(1), pages 230-242.
    12. Amy Finkelstein, 2009. "E-ztax: Tax Salience and Tax Rates," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(3), pages 969-1010.
    13. Martin Fochmann & Joachim Weimann, 2013. "The Effects of Tax Salience and Tax Experience on Individual Work Efforts in a Framed Field Experiment," FinanzArchiv: Public Finance Analysis, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 69(4), pages 511-542, December.
    14. Urs Fischbacher, 2007. "z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(2), pages 171-178, June.
    15. Kay Blaufus & Renate Ortlieb, 2009. "Is Simple Better? A Conjoint Analysis of the Effects of Tax Complexity on Employee Preferences Concerning Company Pension Plans," Schmalenbach Business Review (sbr), LMU Munich School of Management, vol. 61(1), pages 60-83, January.
    16. Martin Fochmann & Dirk Kiesewetter & Abdolkarim Sadrieh, 2012. "The Biased Effect of Aggregated and Disaggregated Income Taxation on Investment Decisions," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 168(3), pages 519-545, September.
    17. Sausgruber, Rupert & Tyran, Jean-Robert, 2011. "Are we taxing ourselves?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(1), pages 164-176.
    18. Ben Greiner, 2004. "The Online Recruitment System ORSEE 2.0 - A Guide for the Organization of Experiments in Economics," Working Paper Series in Economics 10, University of Cologne, Department of Economics.
    19. Heinz König & François Laisney & Michael Lechner & Winfried Pohlmeier, 1995. "Tax Illusion and Labour Supply of Married Women: Evidence from German Data," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(3), pages 347-368, August.
    20. Ben Greiner, 2004. "The Online Recruitment System ORSEE - A Guide for the Organization of Experiments in Economics," Papers on Strategic Interaction 2003-10, Max Planck Institute of Economics, Strategic Interaction Group.
    21. Fochmann, Martin & Hemmerich, Kristina, 2014. "Real tax effects and tax perception effects in decisions on asset allocation," arqus Discussion Papers in Quantitative Tax Research 156, arqus - Arbeitskreis Quantitative Steuerlehre.
    22. Cummins, Jason G. & Hassett, Kevin A., 1992. "The Effects of Taxation on Investment: New Evidence from Firm Level Panel Data," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 45(3), pages 243-51, September.
    23. Lawrence H. Summers, 1987. "Investment Incentives and the Discounting of Depreciation Allowances," NBER Chapters, in: The Effects of Taxation on Capital Accumulation, pages 295-304, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    24. Martin Fochmann & Joachim Weimann & Kay Blaufus & Jochen Hundsdoerfer & Dirk Kiesewetter, 2013. "Net Wage Illusion in a Real-Effort Experiment," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 115(2), pages 476-484, April.
    25. Cummins, Jason G. & Hassett, Kevin A., 1992. "The Effects of Taxation on Investment: New Evidence From Firm Level Panel Data," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 45(3), pages 243-251, September.
    26. Arrazola, Maria & de Hevia, Jose & Sanz, Jose F., 2000. "More on tax perception and labour supply: the Spanish case," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 67(1), pages 15-21, April.
    27. Cohen, Darrel S. & Hansen, Dorthe-Pernille & Hassett, Kevin A., 2002. "The Effects of Temporary Partial Expensing on Investment Incentives in the United States," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 55(3), pages 457-466, September.
    28. Christopher L. House & Matthew D. Shapiro, 2008. "Temporary Investment Tax Incentives: Theory with Evidence from Bonus Depreciation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(3), pages 737-768, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Hagen Ackermann & Martin Fochmann & Nadja Wolf, 2016. "The Effect of Straight-Line and Accelerated Depreciation Rules on Risky Investment Decisions—An Experimental Study," IJFS, MDPI, vol. 4(4), pages 1-26, October.
    2. Fochmann, Martin & Hemmerich, Kristina, 2014. "Real tax effects and tax perception effects in decisions on asset allocation," arqus Discussion Papers in Quantitative Tax Research 156, arqus - Arbeitskreis Quantitative Steuerlehre.
    3. Fochmann, Martin & Hemmerich, Kristina & Kiesewetter, Dirk, 2016. "Intrinsic and extrinsic effects on behavioral tax biases in risky investment decisions," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 218-231.
    4. Carpenter, Jeffrey & Matthews, Peter Hans & Tabb, Benjamin, 2016. "Progressive taxation in a tournament economy," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(C), pages 64-72.
    5. Fahr, René & Janssen, Elmar & Sureth, Caren, 2014. "Can tax rate increases foster investment under entry and exit flexibility? Insights from an economic experiment," arqus Discussion Papers in Quantitative Tax Research 166, arqus - Arbeitskreis Quantitative Steuerlehre.
    6. Martin Fochmann & Johannes Hewig & Dirk Kiesewetter & Katharina Schüßler, 2017. "Affective reactions influence investment decisions: evidence from a laboratory experiment with taxation," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 87(6), pages 779-808, August.
    7. Hirofumi Kurokawa & Tomoharu Mori & Fumio Ohtake, 2016. "A Choice Experiment on Taxes: Are Income and Consumption Taxes Equivalent?," ISER Discussion Paper 0966, Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University.
    8. Ackermann, Hagen & Fochmann, Martin & Mihm, Benedikt, 2013. "Biased effects of taxes and subsidies on portfolio choices," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 120(1), pages 23-26.
    9. Ackermann, Hagen, 2015. "How does the type of subsidization affect investments: Experimental evidence," arqus Discussion Papers in Quantitative Tax Research 185, arqus - Arbeitskreis Quantitative Steuerlehre.
    10. Matthias Weber & Arthur Schram, 2017. "The Non‐equivalence of Labour Market Taxes: A Real‐effort Experiment," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 127(604), pages 2187-2215, September.
    11. Johannes Becker & Jonas Fooken & Melanie Steinhoff, 2019. "Behavioral Effects of Withholding Taxes on Labor Supply," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 121(4), pages 1417-1440, October.
    12. Doerrenberg, Philipp & Duncan, Denvil, 2014. "Experimental evidence on the relationship between tax evasion opportunities and labor supply," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 48-70.
    13. Johannes Abeler & Simon Jäger, 2013. "Complex Tax Incentives - An Experimental Investigation," CESifo Working Paper Series 4231, CESifo.
    14. Martin Fochmann & Joachim Weimann, 2013. "The Effects of Tax Salience and Tax Experience on Individual Work Efforts in a Framed Field Experiment," FinanzArchiv: Public Finance Analysis, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 69(4), pages 511-542, December.
    15. Fochmann, Martin & Wolf, Nadja, 2019. "Framing and salience effects in tax evasion decisions – An experiment on underreporting and overdeducting," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 260-277.
    16. Blaufus, Kay & Bob, Jonathan & Hundsdoerfer, Jochen & Kiesewetter, Dirk & Weimann, Joachim, 2010. "It's all about tax rates: An empirical study of tax perception," arqus Discussion Papers in Quantitative Tax Research 106, arqus - Arbeitskreis Quantitative Steuerlehre.
    17. Ackermann, Hagen & Fochmann, Martin & Mihm, Benedikt, 2012. "Biased effects of taxes and subsidies on portfolio choices," arqus Discussion Papers in Quantitative Tax Research 138, arqus - Arbeitskreis Quantitative Steuerlehre.
    18. Andrea Morone & Francesco Nemore & Simone Nuzzo, 2018. "Experimental evidence on tax salience and tax incidence," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 20(4), pages 582-612, August.
    19. Kay Blaufus & Michael Milde, 2021. "Tax Misperceptions and the Effect of Informational Tax Nudges on Retirement Savings," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(8), pages 5011-5031, August.
    20. Renz, André, 2016. "Die Relevanz von Replikationen in der experimentellen Steuerforschung: Eine Replikationsstudie zu Wahrnehmungsverzerrungen bei Subventionen," arqus Discussion Papers in Quantitative Tax Research 202, arqus - Arbeitskreis Quantitative Steuerlehre.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Taxation; Straight-line Depreciation; Accelerated Depreciation; Tax Perception; Risk Taking Behavior; Portfolio Choice; Behavioral Taxation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • D14 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Saving; Personal Finance
    • H24 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Personal Income and Other Nonbusiness Taxes and Subsidies

    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:zbw:arqudp:158. 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.arqus.info/ .

    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.