Why Do Countries Subsidize Investment and Not Employment?

The governments of nearly all industrialised countries use subsidies to support the economic development of specific sectors or regions with high rates of unemployment. Conventional economic wisdom would suggest that the most efficient way to support these regions or sectors is to pay employment subsidies. We present evidence showing that capital subsidies are empirically much more important than employment subsidies. We then discuss possible explanations for the dominance of investment subsidies and develop a simple model with unemployment to explain this phenomenon. In our model, unemployment arises due to bargaining between unions and heterogenous firms that differ with respect to their productivity. Union bargaining power raises wage costs and leads to a socially inefficient collapse of low productivity firms and a corresponding job loss. Union-firm bargaining also gives rise to underinvestment. In this framework, it turns out that an investment subsidy dominates an employment subsidy in terms of welfare. The reason is that investment subsidies are a more efficient instrument to alleviate the underinvestment problem and to raise the number of operating firms.

Tax Policy and Entrepreneurship in the Presence of Asymmetric Information in Capital Markets

This paper considers the implications of asymmetric information in capital markets for entrepreneurial entry and tax policy. In many countries, governments subsidize the creation of new firms. One possible justification for these subsidies is that capital markets for the financing of new firms do not function properly. We analyse this issue by assuming that entrepreneurs need outside financing for their projects and know more about the quality of their projects than outside investors. Entrepreneurs have the choice between carrying out their entrepreneurial projects or working as an employee. It turns out that asymmetric information in capital markets leads to too much rather than too little entrepreneurial entry. Therefore, the ptimal tax policy should discourage rather than subsidize entrepreneurial entry. We also nalyse the welfare effects of project screening and show that there is too much screening. Our policy conclusion is that subsidies for the foundation of firms must be based on reasons other than informational asymmetries in capital markets.

Capital Mobility and Tax Competition: A Survey

This paper surveys the literature on the implications of international capital mobility for national tax policies. Our main issue for consideration in this survey is whether taxation of income, specifically capital income will survive, how border crossing investment is taxed relative to domestic investment and whether welfare gains can be achieved through international tax coordination. We develop a a “working horse model” of multinational investment which allows to derive many of the key results from the literature on international taxation in a unified framework. Moreover, we put special emphasis on the problem of tax competition and financial arbitrage.tax competition, capital mobility, tax policy

The Optimal Taxation of Dividends in a Small Open Economy

This paper analyses the optimal taxation of dividends and other types of income from portfolio investment. We show that, in an open economy, it is not desirable to offer double taxation relief for dividends paid by domestic firms to domestic households. This result holds for fairly general utility functions. The reason is that the marginal shareholder in domestic firms is a foreign investor. This implies that the level of real investment is not affected by the taxation of domestic dividend income at the household level. A reduction of the tax burden on dividends is therefore merely an undesirable subsidy on domestic asset holdings. Our results also extend the literature on the optimal taxation of risky asset income in general

Steuerliche Probleme von Mitarbeiter-Aktienoptionen

Seit einigen Jahren setzen auch deutsche Unternehmen zunehmend Aktienoptionen als *" Entlohnungsinstrument ein. Wie werden Aktienoptionen gegenwärtig steuerlich behandelt? Besteht im Zuge der Steuerreform ein steuerpolitischer Handlungsbedarf

Steuerliche Probleme von Mitarbeiter-Aktienoptionen

Seit einigen Jahren setzen auch deutsche Unternehmen zunehmend Aktienoptionen als *" Entlohnungsinstrument ein. Wie werden Aktienoptionen gegenwärtig steuerlich behandelt? Besteht im Zuge der Steuerreform ein steuerpolitischer Handlungsbedarf? --