 Taxes and financial frictions: Implications for corporate capital structureJournal of Economic Dynamics and Control, 2019, vol. 101, issue C, 82-100 Abstract: According to data from Compustat, we observe three general trends between 1980 and 2012. First, firms have been reducing their reliance on debt, as leverage ratios have fallen and an increasing fraction of firms are now actually net lenders. Second, the frequency at which firms neither issue external equity nor distribute dividends to shareholders has fallen. Third, marginal corporate income tax rates have fallen significantly as well. Using Compustat balance sheet data, we structurally estimate a model in which heterogeneous firms finance investment with equity and debt. Our model incorporates costly external finance as well as a detailed tax structure, including personal, dividend and corporate income taxes. We conclude that there has been a significant reduction in the cost of external equity, while overall leverage ratios have fallen mainly because of a lower tax advantage of debt. Keywords: Financial frictions; Capital structure; Firm dynamics; Corporate saving; Debt; Equity (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:dyncon:v:101:y:2019:i:c:p:82-100 DOI: 10.1016/j.jedc.2019.02.004 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control is currently edited by J. Bullard, C. Chiarella, H. Dawid, C. H. Hommes, P. Klein and C. Otrok More articles in Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control from Elsevier |
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