Capital Taxation During the U.S. Great Depression

Ellen McGrattan

The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2012, vol. 127, issue 3, 1515-1550

Abstract: Previous studies of the U.S. Great Depression find that increased government spending and taxation contributed little to either the dramatic downturn or the slow recovery. These studies include only one type of capital taxation: a business profits tax. The contribution is much greater when the analysis includes other types of capital taxes. A general equilibrium model extended to include taxes on dividends, property, capital stock, excess profits, and undistributed profits predicts patterns of output, investment, and hours worked that are more like those in the 1930s than found in earlier studies. The greatest effects come from the increased taxes on corporate dividends and undistributed profits. JEL Codes: E13, E32, H25 Copyright 2012, Oxford University Press.

Date: 2012
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/qje/qjs022 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Capital taxation during the U.S. Great Depression (2010)
Working Paper: Capital taxation during the U.S. Great Depression (2010)
Working Paper: Capital Taxation During the U.S. Great Depression (2010)
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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:qjecon:v:127:y:2012:i:3:p:1515-1550

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The Quarterly Journal of Economics is currently edited by Robert J. Barro, Lawrence F. Katz, Nathan Nunn, Andrei Shleifer and Stefanie Stantcheva

More articles in The Quarterly Journal of Economics from President and Fellows of Harvard College
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().