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This paper begins with a discussion of the measurement of business saving,with the conclusion that even "corrected" measures of business saving are quite inaccurate in the presence of inflation, leading to an overstatement of the recent decline in business saving. The remainder of the paper focuses on the more fundamental issue of why it should matter who saves. Beginning from their relevance proposition associated with the Modigliani-Miller theorem, we consider the channels through which taxation causes the identity of the saver to have real effects. Finally, we consider the relative efficiency of business versus personal savings incentives, in light of our results.

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The cost of capital plays an important role in the allocation of resources among competing uses in a decentralized market system. The purpose of this paper is to organize and present what is known and what is hypothesized about the effects of taxation on the incentive to invest, via the cost of capital,taking full account of important issues that arise independently from the question of taxation. Included in the analysis is a discussion of empirical findings about the interaction of inflation and taxation in influencing the incentive to invest, and a treatment of taxation and uncertainty.

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This paper examines the closed economy effects of government policies that vary with respect to whether they treat newly produced capital differently from old capital. Policies that do make this distinction are denoted investment policies, while those that do not are labelled savings policies. While both types of policies alter marginal incentives to accumulate new capital, investment incentives can generate significant inframarginal redistribution from current holders of wealth to those with small or zero claims on the existing capital stock. Among the principal findings, based on simulations of a general equilibrium, perfect foresight, overlapping generations life-cycle model, are:1)Investment incentives, even if financed by short run increases in the stock of debt, significantly increase capital formation.2)Deficit-financed savings incentives, in contrast, typically reduce the economy's long run capital stock.3)Deficit-financed investment incentives can actually be self-financing,in that they may lead to a long run surplus without any increase in other tax rates.