This article integrates the government in the context of company valuation. Our framework allows to analyse and to quantify the risk-sharing effects and conflicts of interest between the government and the shareholders when firms follow different financial policies. We provide novel evidence that firms with fixed future levels of debt might invest more than socially desirable. Economically, this happens if the gain in tax shields is big enough to outweigh the loss in the unlevered firm value. Our findings have implications for the practice of investment subsidy programmes provided by the government to avoid fostering investments beyond the socially optimal level.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.