Swedish Economic Policy Review
Опубликовано на портале: 05-10-2004
Alan J. Auerbach, Kevin A. Hassett, Jan Sodersten
Swedish Economic Policy Review.
1995.
Vol. 2.
No. 2.
P. 361-383.
In 1990, the government of Sweden introduced a major tax reform to take effect in
1991. The Swedish system prior to the legislation was so complex that the size and
magnitude of the likely effects of the reform on incentives to invest were unknown.
In this paper, we draw on Sdersten (1989) and Auerbach and Hassett (1992) and derive
an expression for the user cost of capital that captures the essential features of
the Swedish tax code both before and after the reform. We estimate the model for
investment in equipment and find that the responsiveness of Swedish firms to the
user cost is quite similar to that found for the U.S. Finally, we employ our model
and estimates to assess the effects of the 1991 reform. We find that the impact of
the reform on investment is likely to have been minor and had little to do with the
contemporaneous sharp drop in investment.
