Empirical Studies - Public Finance

该项目收集了新的数据，并就美国税收政策中一些最及时和最重要的问题提供了重要的新结果。第一部分确定交易税和其他交易成本如何影响股市表现。第二部分利用美国时间序列数据提供的“自然实验”，特别是1981年和1986年的税制改革，以及美国和加拿大经验的比较，来检验税收补贴如何影响租赁和自住住房市场的相互竞争的理论。在1987年10月股市暴跌之后，有关交易成本和股市表现的问题引起了政策上的极大兴趣。给予长期投资资本利得税减免的计划，以及对所有证券交易征税而不计收益或亏损的建议，都是此类财政举措的例子。不幸的是，几乎没有经验基础来评估这些建议。该项目的这一部分开发了一个数据集，其中包括世界股票市场各主要证券交易所的交易税和佣金费率的时间序列；使用这些数据和其他有关市场特征的信息来研究交易成本和股票换手率、市场波动性、1987年10月市场下跌的规模和股票回报的序列相关性之间的联系；并对过去十年中改变了交易税率或佣金结构的几个国家进行了深入的研究。税收对房地产市场的影响也是评估最近税收变化的关键。例如，1986年的税收改革法案最终可能会将实际租金提高20%。对于大多数低收入家庭来说，一项可能占家庭预算35%的项目实际成本的这种变化对福利的影响远远大于税收变化的直接影响。该项目使用美国和加拿大的时间序列数据(人口和金融条件相似但税收政策不同的“对照”)来研究税制改革对住房的影响。利用过去五年美国税收政策的变化来确定哪些模型或假设最好地描述了观察到的影响，这方面的实证工作相对较少。

The project assembles new data and provides significant new results on some of the most timely and important issues in U.S. tax policy. The first part determines how transaction taxes and other costs of trading affect stock market performance. The second part uses the "natural experiment" provided by the U.S. time series data, particularly the 1981 and 1986 tax reforms, as well as comparisons between U.S. and Canadian experience, to test competing theories of how tax subsidies affect the markets for rental and owner-occupied housing. The questions about transaction costs and stock market performance attracted substantial policy interest in the aftermath of the October 1987 market break. Plans to grant capital gains tax relief for long-run investments, as well as suggestions to tax all securities transactions regardless of gain or loss, are examples of such fiscal initiatives. Unfortunately, there is virtually no empirical basis for evaluating these proposals. This part of the project develops a data set consisting of time series on the transactions taxes and commission rates for each of the major stock exchanges in world equity markets; uses these data and other information on market characteristics to study the links between trading costs and equity turnover rates, market volatility, the size of the market decline in October 1987, and serial correlation properties of stock returns; and conducts an in-depth study of several nations which have changed their transaction tax rates or their commission structures during the last decade. The influence of taxation on housing markets is also essential to evaluating recent tax changes. For example, the 1986 Tax Reform Act may ultimately increase real rents by twenty percent. For most low-income households, the welfare effects of this change in the real cost of an item which may account for 35% of the household budget is far larger than the direct effects of changes in tax payments. This project uses time series data from the United States and Canada (a "control" with similar demographic and financial conditions but divergent tax policies) to study the housing effects of tax reform. There has been relatively little empirical work using the variation in U.S. tax policies in the last five years to determine which models or assumptions best described the observed effects.