The effect of Double Taxation Treaties and Territorial Tax Systems on Foreign Direct Investment: Evidence for Spain

The present paper evaluates the effect of Double Taxation Treaties and the Territorial Tax System of countries on Spain's inward and outward FDI for the period 1993-2013. Estimations produce a positive and statistically significant effect of Treaties for both samples when using a simple binary variable for measuring the effect of the mere existence of the same. These outcomes keep for old and new Treaties and for the sub-sample of developed partner countries of Spain. However, regarding developing countries, the positive result exists only for the outbound sample. Also for the global samples and the sub-samples of developed countries, there is an additional positive effect on investments for countries applying the Territorial Tax System for taxing foreign income.