Summary

These studies of the cost of capital will inspire and guide policy-makers who share the goal of making the allocation of capital in a market economy more efficient.

Volume 2 is devoted to the cost of capital approach to tax policy. This approach has supplied an important intellectual impetus for reforms of capital income taxation in the United States and around the world. Widespread applications of the cost of capital and the closely related concept of the marginal effective tax rate are due to the fact that these concepts facilitate the representation of economically relevant features of complex tax statutes in a highly succinct form.