New BERG Working Paper No. 169 by Sarah Mignot, Fabio Tramontana and Frank Westerhoff published!

In the BERG Working Paper Series Sarah Mignot, Fabio Tramontana and Frank Westerhoff have published a new paper entitled "Speculative asset price dynamics and wealth taxes".

A complete overview of all BERG Working Papers published so far can be found here.

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Abstract 

Based on the seminal asset-pricing model by Brock and Hommes (1998), we analytically show that higher wealth taxes increase the risky asset’s fundamental value, enlarge its local stability domain, may prevent the birth of nonfundamental steady states and, if they exist, reduce the risky asset’s mispricing. We furthermore find that higher wealth taxes may hinder the emergence of endogenous asset price oscillations and, if they exist, dampen their amplitudes. Since oscillatory price dynamics may be associated with lower mispricing than locally stable nonfundamental steady states, policymakers may not always want to suppress them by imposing (too low) wealth taxes. Overall, however, our study suggests that wealth taxes tend to stabilize the dynamics of financial markets.