Taxes, Regulations, and Asset Prices

Ellen McGrattan and Edward Prescott

No 8623, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: U.S. stock prices have increased much faster than gross domestic product (GDP) in the postwar period. Between 1962 and 2000, corporate equity value relative to GDP nearly doubled. In this paper, we determine what standard growth theory says the equity value should be in 1962 and 2000, the two years for which our steady-state assumption is a reasonable one. We find that the actual valuations were close to the theoretical predictions in both years. The reason for the large run-up in equity value relative to GDP is that the average tax rate on dividends fell dramatically between 1962 and 2000. We also find that, given legal constraints that effectively prohibited the holding of stocks as reserves for pension plans, there is no equity premium puzzle in the postwar period. The average returns on debt and equity are as theory predicts.

JEL-codes: G12 H30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2001-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dge, nep-pbe and nep-pub
Note: AP EFG
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (38)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w8623.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Taxes, regulations, and asset prices (2001)
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:nbr:nberwo:8623

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w8623

Access Statistics for this paper

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