TY  - JOUR
AU  - Rydqvist,Kristian
AU  - Spizman,Joshua
AU  - Strebulaev,Ilya A.
TI  - Government Policy and Ownership of Financial Assets
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 17522
PY  - 2011
Y2  - October 2011
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17522
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17522.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Kristian Rydqvist
Binghamton University
State University of New York
PO BOX 6000 
Binghamton, NY 13902-6000 
E-Mail: rydqvist@binghamton.edu

Joshua Spizman
Loyola Marymount University
Hilton Center for Business
1 LMU Drive, MS 8385
Los Angeles, CA 90045-2659
E-Mail: joshua.spizman@lmu.edu

Ilya A. Strebulaev
Graduate School of Business
Stanford University
655 Knight Way
Stanford, CA 94305
Tel: 650/725-8239
Fax: 650/725-7979
E-Mail: istrebulaev@stanford.edu
AB  - Since World War II, direct stock ownership by households across the globe has largely been replaced by indirect stock ownership by financial institutions. We argue that tax policy is the driving force. Using long time-series from eight countries, we show that the fraction of household ownership decreases with measures of the tax benefits of holding stocks inside tax-deferred plans. This finding is important for policy considerations on effective taxation and for financial economics research on the long-term effects of taxation on corporate finance and asset prices.
ER  -