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The Importance of Measurement Error in the Cost of Capital

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  • Austan Goolsbee

Abstract

Conventional estimates of the impact of taxes on investment may be seriously biased by measurement error in the cost of capital. The existence and size of such error, however, has not been documented. Using panel data on different types of capital equipment, this paper provides direct evidence of measurement error in the tax component of the cost of capital, accounting for about 20 percent of the tax term's variance. Correcting for the error with IV estimation shows that taxes significantly affect both prices and investment and that conventional results may be off by as much as a factor of four.

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  • Austan Goolsbee, 2000. "The Importance of Measurement Error in the Cost of Capital," NBER Working Papers 7558, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:7558
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    Cited by:

    1. Stéphane Guimbert, 2002. "Réformes de la fiscalité du capital en Europe," Revue Française d'Économie, Programme National Persée, vol. 16(4), pages 113-169.
    2. Martin Simmler, 2014. "Do multinational firms invest more? On the impact of internal debt financing on capital accumulation," Working Papers 1424, Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation.
    3. Goolsbee, Austan, 2004. "Taxes and the quality of capital," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(3-4), pages 519-543, March.
    4. Anderson, John E., 2012. "State Tax Rankings: What Do They and Don’t They Tell Us?," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 65(4), pages 985-1010, December.
    5. Ramirez Verdugo, Arturo, 2005. "Tax Incentives and Business Investment: New Evidence from Mexico," MPRA Paper 2272, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 04 Oct 2006.
    6. Guceri, Irem & Albinowski, Maciej, 2021. "Investment responses to tax policy under uncertainty," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 141(3), pages 1147-1170.
    7. Fatica, Serena, 2018. "Business capital accumulation and the user cost: Is there a heterogeneity bias?," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 15-34.
    8. Yoonsoo Lee, 2005. "The importance of reallocations in cyclical productivity and returns to scale: evidence from plant-level data," Working Papers (Old Series) 0509, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
    9. Schaller, Huntley & Voia, Marcel, 2017. "Panel cointegration estimates of the user cost elasticity," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 235-250.
    10. Mr. Shaun K. Roache, 2006. "Domestic Investment and the Cost of Capital in the Caribbean," IMF Working Papers 2006/152, International Monetary Fund.
    11. Laura Spierdijk, 2023. "Assessing the consistency of the fixed-effects estimator: a regression-based Wald test," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 64(4), pages 1599-1630, April.
    12. Nadja Dwenger, 2014. "User Cost Elasticity of Capital Revisited," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 81(321), pages 161-186, January.
    13. Eric Zwick & James Mahon, 2017. "Tax Policy and Heterogeneous Investment Behavior," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(1), pages 217-248, January.
    14. Walch, Florian & Dwenger, Nadja, 2011. "Tax Losses and Firm Investment: Evidence from Tax Statistics," VfS Annual Conference 2011 (Frankfurt, Main): The Order of the World Economy - Lessons from the Crisis 48699, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    15. Shaun K. Roache, 2006. "Domestic Investment and the Cost of Capital in the Caribbean," Applied Econometrics and International Development, Euro-American Association of Economic Development, vol. 6(3).

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    JEL classification:

    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory
    • C23 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Models with Panel Data; Spatio-temporal Models

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