Contributor

Alan J. Auerbach, Robert D. Burch Professor of Economics and Law and director of UC Berkeley’s Burch Center on Tax Policy and Public Finance

Biography provided by participant

Auerbach is director of the Robert D. Burch Center for Tax Policy and Public Finance. The joint program between UC Berkeley's Economics Department and the School of Law (Boalt Hall) was established to promote research in tax policy and public finance, and to stimulate informed discussion on nationally significant tax policies.

He is a member of the advisory committee for the Bureau of Economic Analysis in the U.S. Commerce Department and served as deputy chief of staff for the U.S. Joint Committee on Taxation in 1992. He also was a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. The author of numerous scholarly articles, policy papers, books and reviews, Auerbach was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1999.

Recent Responses

December 21, 2009 10:27 AM

RE: How To Spur Business Investment?

Although some observers may be unaware, recent U.S. tax policy has included frequent attempts at stimulating business fixed investment, primarily through temporary “bonus depreciation” provisions that provided immediate expensing of a fraction of all purchases of qualifying investment (primary equipment). Bonus depreciation was first introduced, at an expensing fraction of 30%, in 2002; the expensing fraction was increased to 50% in 2003. The provision expired at the end of 2004, only to be reintroduced for a year in 2008 and extended for a year in 2009, as part of the February stimulus package. As a temporary investment stimulus, bonus depreciation, like a temporary… Read more