Knowledge that Transforms

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.

In this paper we analyze the determinants of international movements of physical capital in a model with uncertainty and international trade in goods and securities. In our model, the world allocation of capital is governed, to some extent, by the asset preferences of risk-averse consumer-investors. In a one-good variant in the spirit of the MacDougall model, we find that relative factor abundance, relative labor force size, and relative production riskiness have separate but interrelated influences on the direction of equilibrium capital movements. These same factors remain important in a two-good version with Heckscher-Ohlin production structure. In this case, the direction of physical capital flow is determinate (unlike in a world of certainty) and may hinge on the identity of the factor that is used intensively in the industry with random technology.

A model of a small open economy in which agents trade in local goods markets and an economy-wide asset market is developed. Purchasing-power parity is assumed to hold at the aggregate level. However, because of local deviations from purchasing-power parity, agents possess differential information. Using this framework, it is shown that when the exchange rate is flexible monetary policy can influence the distribution of real output by altering the information content of the exchange rate. However, when monetary policy is committed to fixing the exchange rate (by a feedback rule) the distribution of real output is independent of the particular exchange rate rule chosen. The stability of real output under the two regimes is compared, and it is demonstrated that regardless of the stability of domestic monetary policy a flexible exchange rate regime is superior in this respect. Possible qualifications and extensions of these results are also discussed.

This paper considers the possible theoretical validity of the following "monetarjst hypothesis": that a constant, positive government budget deficit can be maintained permanently and without inflation if it is financed by the issue of bonds rather than money. The question is studied in a discrete-time, perfect-foresight version of the competitive equilibrium model of It is shown that the monetarist hypothesis is invalid if the deficit is defined exclusive of interest payments, but is valid under the conventional definition. It is also shown that the stock of bonds can grow indefinitely at a rate in excess of the rate of output growth, provided that the difference is less than the rate of time preference.

This paper develops a finite-horizon dynamic stochastic model of discrete choice with respect to life-cycle fertility within an environment where infant survival is uncertain. The model yields implications for the number, timing, and spacing of children. A tractable estimation method is developed for the linear constraint-quadratic utility case that is intimately tied to the dynamic optimization problem, and the method is applied to Malaysian household data. Estimation is based on integrating the numerical solution of the dynamic programming model of behavior with a maximum likelihood procedure.