IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/itaxpf/v30y2023i5d10.1007_s10797-022-09757-7.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Risky business: policy uncertainty and investment

Author

Listed:
  • Giacomo Brusco

    (University of Tübingen)

  • Benjamin Glass

    (U.S. Department of the Treasury)

Abstract

Previous work has shown that nonlinear taxation can affect the willingness to undertake risky investments. We show that similar results can arise if agents are uncertain regarding future tax rates. Uncertain taxes distort investment decisions when tax rates are correlated with marginal productivity. We demonstrate this result in a simple theoretical framework, which can also explain some well-known results on the effects of tax progressivity and tax asymmetry on investment. Time-series estimates for the post-WW2 era suggest a negative correlation between effective tax rates and total factor productivity in the USA, yielding an effect on firm investment equivalent to an investment subsidy of around 1 percent. Our results have wide-ranging implications for a variety of tax-related work, including effective tax rates, optimal audit policy, and principal-agent problems between investors and managers.

Suggested Citation

  • Giacomo Brusco & Benjamin Glass, 2023. "Risky business: policy uncertainty and investment," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 30(5), pages 1331-1345, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:itaxpf:v:30:y:2023:i:5:d:10.1007_s10797-022-09757-7
    DOI: 10.1007/s10797-022-09757-7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10797-022-09757-7
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10797-022-09757-7?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Skinner, Jonathan, 1988. "The welfare cost of uncertain tax policy," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 129-145, November.
    2. Kyle Handley & Nuno Limão, 2018. "Policy Uncertainty, Trade, and Welfare: Theory and Evidence for China and the United States," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Policy Externalities and International Trade Agreements, chapter 5, pages 123-175, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    3. Plesko, George A., 2003. "An evaluation of alternative measures of corporate tax rates," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 201-226, June.
    4. Stiglitz, Joseph E., 1982. "Utilitarianism and horizontal equity : The case for random taxation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 1-33, June.
    5. Scotchmer, Suzanne & Slemrod, Joel, 1989. "Randomness in tax enforcement," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 17-32, February.
    6. Reinganum, Jennifer F. & Wilde, Louis L., 1985. "Income tax compliance in a principal-agent framework," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 1-18, February.
    7. Weiss, Laurence, 1976. "The Desirability of Cheating Incentives and Randomness in the Optimal Income Tax," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 84(6), pages 1343-1352, December.
    8. Hines Jr., James R. & Keen, Michael J., 2021. "Certain effects of random taxes," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 203(C).
    9. Scott R. Baker & Nicholas Bloom & Steven J. Davis, 2016. "Measuring Economic Policy Uncertainty," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 131(4), pages 1593-1636.
    10. Chang, F. R. & Wildasin, D. E., 1986. "Randomization of commodity taxes : An expenditure minimization approach," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 329-345, December.
    11. Graham, John R., 1996. "Debt and the marginal tax rate," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(1), pages 41-73, May.
    12. William M. Gentry & R. Glenn Hubbard, 2005. ""Success Taxes," Entrepreneurial Entry, and Innovation," NBER Chapters, in: Innovation Policy and the Economy, Volume 5, pages 87-108, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Blouin, Jennifer & Core, John E. & Guay, Wayne, 2010. "Have the tax benefits of debt been overestimated?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 98(2), pages 195-213, November.
    14. Alan J. Auerbach, 1986. "The Dynamic Effects of Tax Law Asymmetries," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 53(2), pages 205-225.
    15. Pindyck, Robert S, 1988. "Irreversible Investment, Capacity Choice, and the Value of the Firm," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(5), pages 969-985, December.
    16. Rodrik, Dani, 1991. "Policy uncertainty and private investment in developing countries," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 229-242, October.
    17. Rosanne Altshuler & Alan J. Auerbach, 1990. "The Significance of Tax Law Asymmetries: An Empirical Investigation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 105(1), pages 61-86.
    18. R. Glenn Hubbard & William M. Gentry, 2000. "Tax Policy and Entrepreneurial Entry," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(2), pages 283-287, May.
    19. Gentry, William M. & Hubbard, R. Glenn, 2004. "The effects of progressive income taxation on job turnover," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(11), pages 2301-2322, September.
    20. Brito, Dagobert L. & Hamilton, Jonathan H. & Slutsky, Steven M. & Stiglitz, Joseph E., 1995. "Randomization in optimal income tax schedules," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 189-223, February.
    21. Graham, John R. & Kim, Hyunseob, 2009. "The Effects of the Length of the Tax-Loss Carryback Period on Tax Receipts and Corporate Marginal Tax Rates," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 62(3), pages 413-427, September.
    22. Caggiano, Giovanni & Castelnuovo, Efrem & Figueres, Juan Manuel, 2017. "Economic policy uncertainty and unemployment in the United States: A nonlinear approach," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 31-34.
    23. Nicholas Bloom, 2009. "The Impact of Uncertainty Shocks," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(3), pages 623-685, May.
    24. Devereux, Michael P. & Keen, Michael & Schiantarelli, Fabio, 1994. "Corporation tax asymmetries and investment : Evidence from U.K. panel data," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(3), pages 395-418, March.
    25. Alm, James, 1988. "Uncertain Tax Policies, Individual Behavior, and Welfare," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(1), pages 237-245, March.
    26. Johansen, Soren, 1995. "Likelihood-Based Inference in Cointegrated Vector Autoregressive Models," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198774501.
    27. Evsey D. Domar & Richard A. Musgrave, 1944. "Proportional Income Taxation and Risk-Taking," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 58(3), pages 388-422.
    28. Lie, Erik & Lie, Heidi J., 1999. "The Role of Personal Taxes in Corporate Decisions: An Empirical Analysis of Share Repurchases and Dividends," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 34(4), pages 533-552, December.
    29. Coles, Jeffrey L. & Daniel, Naveen D. & Naveen, Lalitha, 2006. "Managerial incentives and risk-taking," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(2), pages 431-468, February.
    30. Eric Zwick & James Mahon, 2017. "Tax Policy and Heterogeneous Investment Behavior," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(1), pages 217-248, January.
    31. Edgerton, Jesse, 2010. "Investment incentives and corporate tax asymmetries," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(11-12), pages 936-952, December.
    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. Becker, Johannes & Johannesen, Niels & Riedel, Nadine, 2020. "Taxation and the allocation of risk inside the multinational firm," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 183(C).
    2. James R. Hines Jr. & Michael Keen, 2018. "Certain Effects of Uncertain Taxes," NBER Working Papers 25388, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Hines Jr., James R. & Keen, Michael J., 2021. "Certain effects of random taxes," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 203(C).
    4. Dominika Langenmayr & Rebecca Lester, 2013. "Taxation and corporate risk-taking," Working Papers 1316, Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation.
    5. Masanori Orihara, 2016. "Corporate tax asymmetries and R&D: Evidence from a tax reform for business groups in Japan," Discussion papers ron273, Policy Research Institute, Ministry of Finance Japan.
    6. Haufler, Andreas & Norbäck, Pehr-Johan & Persson, Lars, 2014. "Entrepreneurial innovations and taxation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 13-31.
    7. Cezar, Rafael & Gigout, Timothée & Tripier, Fabien, 2020. "Cross-border investments and uncertainty: Firm-level evidence," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 108(C).
    8. Slemrod, Joel & Traxler, Christian, 2010. "Optimal observability in a linear income tax," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 108(2), pages 105-108, August.
    9. Gigout, Timothee, 2019. "Firm dynamics in an global and uncertain economy," MPRA Paper 96569, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 16 Oct 2019.
    10. Faig, Miquel & Shum, Pauline, 1999. "Irreversible investment and endogenous financing: An evaluation of the corporate tax effects," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 143-171, February.
    11. Edgerton, Jesse, 2010. "Investment incentives and corporate tax asymmetries," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(11-12), pages 936-952, December.
    12. Hines, James R. & Park, Jongsang, 2019. "Investment ramifications of distortionary tax subsidies," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 172(C), pages 36-51.
    13. Yuan, Di & Li, Sufang & Li, Rong & Zhang, Feipeng, 2022. "Economic policy uncertainty, oil and stock markets in BRIC: Evidence from quantiles analysis," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(C).
    14. Arigoni, Filippo & Lenarčič, Črt, 2020. "The impact of trade policy uncertainty shocks on the Euro Area," MPRA Paper 100832, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Carlos D. Ramirez, 2024. "The effect of economic policy uncertainty under fractional integration," Portuguese Economic Journal, Springer;Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestao, vol. 23(1), pages 89-110, January.
    16. Orkhan Nadirov & Bruce Dehning, 2020. "Tax Progressivity and Entrepreneurial Dynamics," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(9), pages 1-21, April.
    17. Long, Shaobo & Pei, Hongxia & Tian, Hao & Li, Fangfang, 2021. "Asymmetric impacts of economic policy uncertainty, capital cost, and raw material cost on China’s investment," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 129-144.
    18. Degiannakis, Stavros & Filis, George & Panagiotakopoulou, Sofia, 2018. "Oil price shocks and uncertainty: How stable is their relationship over time?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 42-53.
    19. Osswald, Benjamin & Sureth, Caren, 2018. "Do country risk factors attenuate the effect of taxes on corporate risk-taking?," arqus Discussion Papers in Quantitative Tax Research 235, arqus - Arbeitskreis Quantitative Steuerlehre.
    20. Lei Zhang & Yuyu Chen & Zongyan He, 2018. "The effect of investment tax incentives: evidence from China’s value-added tax reform," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 25(4), pages 913-945, August.

    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:kap:itaxpf:v:30:y:2023:i:5:d:10.1007_s10797-022-09757-7. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.