Do Firms Do What They Say? The Effect of the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 on R&D Spending

Prior studies debate whether the temporary tax holiday provided by the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 (AJCA) increased firm spending on domestic investment. Since internal equity is an important funding source for research and development (R&D), and the AJCA lowered the cost of accessing internal equity through reduced repatriation tax rates, we hypothesize and find that on average, the AJCA led to increased firm spending on R&D. Our results bridge the gap between prior empirical results that do not show an average effect of increased domestic investment under the AJCA and survey results that report increased domestic investment as a common use of funds repatriated under the AJCA.

JEL Classifications: G15; G38.