The possibility of creating a state bank has received much recent attention in the United States. In 2021, six states introduced legislation to create a state bank; in 2019, similar legislation was enacted in California for municipal banks. This paper develops a framework to evaluate state...

This paper reviews selected fiscal policy initiatives undertaken by US states to encourage job creation and innovation. We begin with a discussion of some general considerations about the design of tax policies summarized in a tax policy design table. Four policies are reviewed: job creation tax...

We study the conditions under which fiscal foresight – forward-looking agents anticipating future policy changes – results in perverse economic behavior through unintended intertemporal tradeoffs. Somewhat surprisingly, fiscal foresight by itself is far from sufficient for policy-induced...

This paper presents empirical evidence on one aspect of central bank communication policy - formal pronouncements by central bankers - to better understand whether this channel matters and, if so, the nature of the information being transmitted. We examine the relationship between three types of...

Market power exercised by firms has become central to macroeconomics. Recent theoretical work highlights the importance of the relation between market power and inflation. We examine this relation for individual firms in eleven U.S. industries. Our econometric framework exploits restrictions...

This paper examines the history, scope, and types of investment taxcredits (ITC's) implemented in the United States. Changing viewsabout the role of this fiscal policy tool are related to changing viewsabout the structure of the economy and the possibilities forconstructive public policies. The...

This paper analyses the impact of share ownership, creditorship and networking by financial institutions on the performance of 94 Dutch non-financial firms in the period 1992-1996. We find a nonlinear relationship between firm performance and ownership by banks. Because of various defense...

This study provides some perspective on analyzing the effects of corporate taxation on capital formation. Our framework translates tax policy legislation into real outcomes, and identifies three parameters that play a central role in determining the impact on policy. The remainder of the paper...

By studying the gap between the discount rates used by executives and shareholders, we assess the extent to which governance problems distort firm behavior. The estimation strategy recovers discount rates used by executives from the pattern of their actual investment spending. Our empirical work...

The Berle-Means problem - information and incentive asymmetries disrupting relations between knowledgeable managers and remote investors - has remained a durable issue engaging researchers since the 1930's. However, the Berle-Means paradigm - widely-dispersed, helpless investors facing strong,...