This paper reconsiders the effects of taxation on risky assets, recognizing the importance of variations in asset prices. We show that earlier analyses which assumed that depreciation rates are constant and that the future price of capital goods is known with certainty are very misleading, as guides to the effects of corporate taxes. We then examine the concept of economic depreciation in a risky environment, and show that depreciation allowances, if set ex-ante, should be adjusted to take account of future asset price risk. Some empirical calculations suggest that these adjustments are large, and have important implications for the burdens of, and non-neutralities in, the corporate income tax.

The authors present a simple overlapping generations model of an asset market in which irrational noise traders with erroneous stochastic beliefs both affect prices and earn higher expected returns. The unpredictability of noise traders' beliefs creates a risk in the price of the asset that deters rational arbitrageurs from aggressively betting against them. As a result, prices can diverge significantly from fundamental values even in the absence of fundamental risk. Moreover, bearing a disproportionate amount of risk that they themselves create enables noise traders to earn a higher expected return than rational investors do. The model sheds light on a number of financial anomalies.