A large part of border crossing investment takes the form of international mergers and acquisitions. In this paper, we ask how optimal repatriation tax systems look like in a world where investment involves a change of ownership, rather than a reallocation of real capital. We find that the...

The standard tax theory result that investment should not be distorted is based on the assumption that profits are locally bound. In this paper we analyze the optimal tax policy in a model where firms are internationally mobile. We show that the optimal policy response to increasing firm...

In this short paper, we review the criticism of the standard view (the ’old view’) of foreign profit taxation which goes back to Peggy Musgrave (née Richman, 1963). This ?new view of international taxation is based on recent empirical studies and favours a system where foreign profits are...

This paper measures the relative importance of quality and quantity effects of corporate taxation on foreign direct investment. Quantity is affected if corporate taxes reduce the equilibrium stock of foreign capital in a given country. Quality effects arise if taxes decrease the extent to which...

This note provides a novel argument why countries may have incentives to allow for some profit shifting to low-tax jurisdictions. The reason is that a tightening of transfer pricing policies by high tax countries leads to more agressive tax rate competition by low tax countries.

The European Union provides coordination and financing of trans-European transport infrastructures, i.e. roads and railways, which link the EU Member States and reduce the cost of transport and mobility. This raises the question of whether EU involvement in this area is justified by...

This paper deals with the impact of electoral competition on politicians' outside earnings. In our framework, politicians face a tradeoff between allocating their time to political effort or to an alternative use generating outside earnings. The main hypothesis is that the amount of time spent...

An increase in the taxation of foreign a¢ liates reduces domestic investment, as has recently been empirically shown in Becker and Riedel (2012). This paper investigates the implication of this ?nding for tax competition. It is shown that an increase in the number of multinational ?rms (in...

We analyse the role of business taxation for corporate risk-taking under different accounting principles. We build a model in which investors have complete information and markets are perfect. A representative risk-neutral firm invests in one unit of an asset choosing from a continuum of assets...

A recent empirical literature has arisen documenting the response of one nation?s policy choices, including tax, environmental, and labour policies, to that of others. This has been largely interpreted as evidence of competition, be it for mobile resources (like FDI, taxable book income etc.) or...