Mit seinem Weltbestseller "Das Kapital im 21. Jahrhundert" hat Thomas Piketty eine heftige Kontroverse über die wachsende Ungleichheit in den westlichen Gesellschaften und deren Ursachen ausgelöst. Nun folgt der "World Inequality Report" - der gründlichste und aktuellste Bericht zur Lage der...

This paper investigates the effects of capital gains and dividend taxes on excess returns around announcements of dividend increases and ex-dividend days for U.S. corporations. Consistent with standard no-arbitrage conditions, we find that the ex-dividend day premium increased from 2002 to 2004...

This paper analyzes the effects of dividend taxation on corporate behavior using the large tax cut on individual dividend income enacted in 2003. Using data spanning 1980 to 2004-Q2, we document a sharp and widespread surge in dividend payments following the tax cut, along several dimensions....

The individual income tax burden on dividends was lowered sharply in 2003 from a maximum rate of 35% to 15%, creating a unique opportunity to analyze the effects of dividend taxes on dividend payments by U.S. corporations. This paper uses data from the Center for Research in Security Prices...

This paper presents new homogeneous series on top wealth shares from 1916 to 2000 in the United States using estate tax return data. Top wealth shares were very high at the beginning of the period but have been hit sharply by the Great Depression, the New Deal, and World War II shocks. Those...

This paper presents new homogeneous series on top shares of income from 1920 to 2000 in Canada using personal income tax return data. Top income shares display a U-shaped pattern over the century, with a precipitous drop during World War II, followed by a slower decline until 1970. Since the...

At the zero lower bound, the New Keynesian model predicts that output and inflation collapse to implausibly low levels, and that government spending and forward guidance have implausibly large effects. To resolve these anomalies, we introduce wealth into the utility function; the justification...