This paper examines three questions motivated by previous research on semiconductors and productivity growth: Why did semiconductor prices fall so rapidly in the second half of the 1990s? Why has the rate of price decline slowed since 2001? And to what extent are these price swings associated...

What accounts for the apparent preference of firms to finance investment with internal funds? Recent theories stress information problems in capital markets, while older theories emphas ize the transactions costs of external finance. To test these competing hypotheses, the authors estimate the...

Using data on union certification elections, the authors estimate the impact of unionization on firms' investment behavior. Employing both a standard q model and an 'investment surprises' technique, they find that union certification significantly reduces investment in the year following the...

This article explores the question of whether unionization influences the decision of a firm to merge with another firm. The authors combine merger data, taken from COMPUSTAT, with firm-specific union data obtained from several sources. An econometric matching model allows them to isolate the...

This paper provides an effective tax rate measure that is valid in the presence of adjustment costs and anticipated tax changes and a measure of the impact of tax changes on market value that may be decomposed into the effects on discounted pure profits and normal returns to capital. Changes in...

This study uses tax reform data for U.S. nonfinancial corporations for the period 1971-82 to estimate the importance of restrictions on the ability of firms to use tax credits and to obtain refunds for tax losses. The authors' results suggest that the incidence of such unused tax benefits...

Prevalent thinking about liquidity traps suggests that the perfect substitutability of money and bonds at a zero short-term nominal interest rate renders open-market operations ineffective for achieving macroeconomic stabilization goals. We show that even were this the case, there remains a...