IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ntj/journl/v67y2014i3p569-594.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Indirect and Direct Subsidies for the Cost of Government Capital: Comparing Tax-Exempt Bonds and Build America Bonds

Author

Listed:
  • Gao Liu
  • Dwight V. Denison

Abstract

Using data from the California primary market, we fnd that on average Build America Bonds (BABs) have after-subsidy interest rates approximately 72 basis points lower than tax-exempt bonds, and the savings increase with bond maturity. The implied tax rate for the marginal municipal bond investor is 25 percent, which is also the neutral subsidy rate at which municipal bond issuers are indifferent between issuing tax-exempt bonds and BABs. Analysis of paired tax-exempt bonds and BABs issued by the same issuers on the same dates suggests a comparable implied tax rate and net after-subsidy savings of about 65 basis points.

Suggested Citation

  • Gao Liu & Dwight V. Denison, 2014. "Indirect and Direct Subsidies for the Cost of Government Capital: Comparing Tax-Exempt Bonds and Build America Bonds," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 67(3), pages 569-594, September.
  • Handle: RePEc:ntj:journl:v:67:y:2014:i:3:p:569-594
    DOI: 10.17310/ntj.2014.3.03
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.17310/ntj.2014.3.03
    Download Restriction: Access is restricted to subscribers and members of the National Tax Association.

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.17310/ntj.2014.3.03
    Download Restriction: Access is restricted to subscribers and members of the National Tax Association.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17310/ntj.2014.3.03?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cestau, Dario & Green, Richard C. & Schürhoff, Norman, 2013. "Tax-subsidized underpricing: The market for Build America Bonds," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(5), pages 593-608.
    2. Jun Peng & Peter Brucato, 2004. "An empirical analysis of market and institutional mechanisms for alleviating information asymmetry in the municipal bond market," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 28(2), pages 226-238, June.
    3. Poterba, James M. & Verdugo, Arturo Ramírez, 2011. "Portfolio Substitution and the Revenue Cost of the Federal Income Tax Exemption for State and Local Government Bonds," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 64(2), pages 591-613, June.
    4. Ronald C. Fisher & Robert W. Wassmer, 2014. "The Issuance of State and Local Debt During the United States Great Recession," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 67(1), pages 113-150, March.
    5. Chalmers, John M R, 1998. "Default Risk Cannot Explain the Muni Puzzle: Evidence from Municipal Bonds That Are Secured by U.S. Treasury Obligations," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 11(2), pages 281-308.
    6. Miller, Merton H, 1977. "Debt and Taxes," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 32(2), pages 261-275, May.
    7. Green, Richard C, 1993. "A Simple Model of the Taxable and Tax-Exempt Yield Curves," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 6(2), pages 233-264.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Harvey Galper & Kim Rueben & Richard Auxier & Amanda Eng, 2014. "Municipal Debt: What Does It Buy and Who Benefits?," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 67(4), pages 901-924, December.
    2. Daniel Garrett & Andrey Ordin & James W Roberts & Juan Carlos Suárez Serrato, 2023. "Tax Advantages and Imperfect Competition in Auctions for Municipal Bonds," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 90(2), pages 815-851.
    3. Thomas Luke Spreen & Ed Gerrish, 2022. "Taxes and tax‐exempt bonds: A literature review," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(4), pages 767-808, September.
    4. Martin J. Luby & Peter Orr & Richard Ryffel, 2021. "Direct Versus Indirect Federal Bond Subsidies: New Evidence on Cost of Capital," Public Budgeting & Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(1), pages 76-120, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Thomas Luke Spreen & Ed Gerrish, 2022. "Taxes and tax‐exempt bonds: A literature review," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(4), pages 767-808, September.
    2. Robert Novy-Marx & Joshua D. Rauh, 2012. "Fiscal Imbalances and Borrowing Costs: Evidence from State Investment Losses," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 4(2), pages 182-213, May.
    3. Graham, John R., 1999. "Do personal taxes affect corporate financing decisions?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(2), pages 147-185, August.
    4. Junbo Wang & Chunchi Wu & Frank X. Zhang, 2005. "Liquidity, default, taxes and yields on municipal bonds," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2005-35, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    5. Dario Cestau & Burton Hollifield & Dan Li & Norman Schürhoff, 2019. "Municipal Bond Markets," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 11(1), pages 65-84, December.
    6. McConnell, John J. & Saretto, Alessio, 2010. "Auction failures and the market for auction rate securities," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(3), pages 451-469, September.
    7. Xu, Kuan, 1998. "Income uncertainty, substitution effect and relative yield spreads," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 217-225.
    8. Albert Lee Chun & Ethan Namvar & Xiaoxia Ye & Fan Yu, 2019. "Modeling Municipal Yields With (and Without) Bond Insurance," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(8), pages 3694-3713, August.
    9. Wang, Junbo & Wu, Chunchi & Zhang, Frank X., 2008. "Liquidity, default, taxes, and yields on municipal bonds," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 32(6), pages 1133-1149, June.
    10. Racheva-Sarabian, Anna & Ryvkin, Dmitry & Semykina, Anastasia, 2015. "The default of special district financing: Evidence from California," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(C), pages 37-48.
    11. Darko B. Vukovic & Carlos J. Rincon & Moinak Maiti, 2021. "Price distortions and municipal bonds premiums: evidence from Switzerland," Financial Innovation, Springer;Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, vol. 7(1), pages 1-21, December.
    12. Hattori, Takahiro, 2018. "Decomposing Japanese municipal bond spreads: Default and liquidity premiums in times of crisis," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 16-28.
    13. Tania Babina & Chotibhak Jotikasthira & Christian Lundblad & Tarun Ramadorai, 2021. "Heterogeneous Taxes and Limited Risk Sharing: Evidence from Municipal Bonds [The distribution of realized stock return volatility]," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 34(1), pages 509-568.
    14. Sinha, Pankaj & Bansal, Vishakha, 2014. "Interrelationship between taxes, capital structure decisions and value of the firm: A panel data study on Indian manufacturing firms," MPRA Paper 58310, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 30 Jul 2014.
    15. Landon, Stuart, 2009. "The capitalization of taxes in bond prices: Evidence from the market for Government of Canada bonds," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 33(12), pages 2175-2184, December.
    16. Rossi, Stefano, 2015. "What Drives Financial Reform? Economics and Politics of the State-Level Adoption of Municipal Bankruptcy Laws," CEPR Discussion Papers 10984, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    17. Green, Richard C. & Hollifield, Burton, 2003. "The personal-tax advantages of equity," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 175-216, February.
    18. Robert Brooks, 2005. "A Surplus Optimization Approach to Managing Municipal Debt," Public Finance Review, , vol. 33(2), pages 236-254, March.
    19. Brooks, Robert, 1999. "Municipal bonds: a contingent claims perspective," Financial Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 8(2), pages 71-85.
    20. Poterba, James M., 2002. "Taxation, risk-taking, and household portfolio behavior," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 17, pages 1109-1171, Elsevier.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ntj:journl:v:67:y:2014:i:3:p:569-594. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: The University of Chicago Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.ntanet.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.