We examine the incentives that owners of competing firms give their managers. We show that, in equilibrium, each manager will be paid in excess of his decision's marginal profit in a Cournot-quantity game, but paid less than the marginal profit in a price game. In the Cournot case, deviations from profit maximization are reduced by ex ante cost uncertainty and increased by correlation in the firms' costs.

This paper examines the impact of Social Security on national saving and individual welfare in the presence of realistic capital market imperfections--market failure in the private provision of annuities and restrictions on borrowing against anticipated future wages. The introduction of Social Security increases lifetime welfare and reduces national saving if borrowing restrictions are absent. However, the increase in individual welfare is reduced, and in some cases eliminated, when borrowing constraints are taken into consideration. The substantial difference suggests the importance of reexamining the proportional payroll tax finance of Social Security.

This paper examines the marginal efficiency cost of various factor taxes in a dynamic general-equilibrium model. The au thor solves for the excess burden of anticipated and unanticipated, t emporary and permanent, tax policies. Using a range of estimates for taste and technology parameters, he finds excess burdens larger than those indicated by previous studies that use static models. These exc ess burdens are sensitive to parameter values and timing. However, th e rankings of alternative tax policies turn out to be insensitive to structural parameter values. Copyright 1987 by University of Chicago Press.

ABSTRACT We examine the impact of capital income taxation, both accrual forms of taxation and taxation of realized capital gains, on total savings and the demand for corporate financial instruments. We find that investors may hold both debt and equity in the face of effective collection of capital gains taxation even in a flat tax system. We also find that the two taxes will have substantially different effects on saving and consumption behavior, making it unlikely that the tax structure can be summarized by any single equivalent accrual tax rate.

We examine the impact of capital income taxation, both accrual forms of taxation and taxation of realized capital gains, on total savings and the demand for corporate financial instruments. We find that investors may hold both debt and equity in the face of effective collection of capital gains taxation even in a flat tax system. We also find that the two taxes will have substantially different effects on saving and consumption behavior, making it unlikely that the tax structure can be summarized by any single equivalent accrual tax rate.

This paper examines the impact of social security on national saving and individual welfare in the presence of realistic capital-market imperfections: market failure in the private provision of annuities and restrictions on borrowing against anticipated future wages. The introduction of social security increases lifetime welfare and reduces national saving if borrowing restrictions are absent. However, the increase in individual welfare is reduced, and in some cases eliminated, when borrowing constraints are taken into consideration. The substantial difference suggests the importance of reexamining the proportional payroll tax finance of social security. Copyright 1987 by American Economic Association.