This paper explores investment fluctuations due to discrete changes in a plant's capital stock. The resulting aggregate investment dynamics are surprisingly rich, reflecting the interaction between a replacement cycle, the cross-sectional distribution of the age of the capital stock, and an aggregate shock. Using plant-level data, lumpy investment is procyclical and more likely for older capital. Further, the predicted path of aggregate investment that neglects vintage effects tracks actual aggregate investment reasonably well. However, ignoring fluctuations in the cross-sectional distribution of investment vintages can yield predictable nontrivial errors in forecasting changes in aggregate investment.

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The purpose of this analysis is to improve the U.S. Department of the Treasury's distributional model and methodology by defi ning new model parameters. We compute the percentage of capital income attributable to normal versus supernormal return, the percentage of normal return attributable to the "cash fl ow tax" portion of the tax that does not impose a tax burden, and the portion of the burdensome tax on the normal return to capital borne by capital income versus labor income. In summary, 82 percent of the corporate income tax burden is borne by capital income and 18 percent is borne by labor income.

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