Stephen Bond took up this half-time appointment in October 1993, together with a half-time position at the Institute for Fiscal Studies. During the year he has pursued research into company investment and dividend behaviour, the effects of business taxation, and the econometrics of panel data. He wrote a report for HM Treasury on the effect of taxes on company dividends, and a report for the Department of the Environment on the effect of business rates on commercial property rents. He published papers on company investment and financial constraints, and began working on a comparative international study of this issue. A short article, 'High on Dividends, Low on Investment' was published in the Financial Times (Personal View, 20 May 1994), and he contributed to a BBC Radio 4 Analysis programme on finance and investment. He also worked on papers on the design of a neutral business tax, and on the role of initial conditions in dynamic panel data models.
He organized two conferences during the year: on Business Investment in Britain at the Institute for Fiscal Studies in May, and the annual conference of the ESRC Econometric Study Group at Bristol University in July. He presented papers at international conferences on microeconometrics in Marseille and panel data in Paris. He also visited INSEE in Paris to work on French company data, and participated in a CEPR conference on corporate finance in Portugal. He acted as convenor for the ESRC Econometric Study Group, and served on the editorial board on Fiscal Studies.
Publications
(with C Meghir) 'Dynamic Investment Models and the Firm's Financial Policy', Review of Economic Studies, 61, April 1994.
(with C Meghir) 'Financial constraints and Company Investment', Fiscal Studies, 15, 2, May 1994.