How Does the Deferral of a Distortive Tax Affect Overproduction and Asset Allocation?
通过实验室实验，发现递延的扭曲性所得税会导致过度生产和风险承担意愿下降，原因是人们短视且孤立决策，即使提供额外信息也无法纠正，只有改为即时征税才能消除影响。
Deferred income taxation is widely used to encourage investment or saving. However, most income tax bases are more or less distortive (non-neutral). Using lab experiments, we find that the deferral of a distortive income taxation can result in substantial overproduction and less willingness to take risks. Subjects underweight the deferred tax burden and neglect the tax distortion because they act myopically and tend to make choices in isolation rather than simultaneously (choice bracketing). Despite opportunities to learn, the overproduction remains substantial. Additional analyses confirm that the observed misperception of deferred taxes is not caused by low tax salience or low effort, as providing additional accounting information on deferred taxes and introducing accountability reports do not change overproduction behavior. Only if we change the timing of the taxation from deferred to an economically equivalent immediate distortive tax system do overproduction and the effect on asset allocation almost disappear.