Investment Tax Incentives, Prices, and the Supply of Capital Goods

Austan Goolsbee ()

No 6192, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Using data on the prices of capital goods, this paper shows that much of the benefit of" investment tax incentives does not go to investing firms but rather to capital suppliers through" higher prices. The reduction in the cost of capital from a 10 percent investment tax credit" increases equipment prices 3.5-7.0 percent. This lasts several years and is largest for assets with" large order backlogs, low import competition, or with a large fraction of buyers able to use" investment subsidies. Capital goods workers' wages rise, too. Instrumental variables estimates" of the short-run supply elasticity are around 1 and can explain the traditionally small estimates of" investment demand elasticities. In absolute value, the demand elasticity implied here exceeds 1."

JEL-codes: E62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1997-09
Note: PE
View list of references

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w6192.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html.

Related works:
Journal Article: Investment Tax Incentives, Prices, And The Supply Of Capital Goods (1998)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:6192

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w6192
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc
Address: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by ().