Although an overwhelming proportion of all legal disputes end in settlement, the determinants of the timing of settlement remain empirically underexplored. We draw on a novel dataset on the duration of commercial disputes in Slovenia to study how the timing of settlement is shaped by the stages...

Business groups in emerging markets perform better than unaffiliated firms. One explanation is that business groups substitute some functions of missing institutions, for example, enforcing contracts. We investigate this by setting up a model where firms within the business group are connected...

We utilize case-level data from a large Belgian court to study a policy-relevant but thus far empirically unexplored aspect of judicial behavior: the time that a judge takes to deliberate on a case before rendering a verdict. Exploiting the de facto random administrative assignment of filed...

This paper examines the impact of tax evasion on criminal activities in Italy. Precisely, we consider three types of crime particularly related to economic determinants: property crimes (including robberies, thefts and car thefts), frauds and usury. By using annual data for the Italian provinces...

Many subsidiaries can deduct interest payments on internal debt from their taxable income. By issuing internal debt from a tax haven, multinationals can shift income out of host countries through the interest rates they charge and the amount of internal debt they issue. We show that, from a...

To what extent does a tax credit affect firms' R&D activity? What are the mechanisms? This paper examines the effect of R&D tax credits on firms' R&D expenditure by exploiting the variation across firms in the changes in the eligible tax credit rate between 2000 and 2003. Estimating the...

This paper analyzes the effect on firm behavior and national tax revenues of a policy of allowing multinational firms to choose whether to be taxed under separate accounting rules (transfer prices) or an apportionment formula. Either method can be preferred by low-cost firms and by high-cost...

In 2018, the European Council and the UK and Spanish governments each proposed to introduce a Digital Services Tax (DST), to be levied on the revenue of large digital platforms from advertising, online intermediation, and/or the transmission of data. We offer a rationalization of the DST as a...

This paper reviews the economic effects of the EU Savings Taxation Directive. The Directive aims at enabling taxation of foreign interest payments received by individuals in accordance with the rules of their State of residence. The data suggest that the Directive, which is based on automatic...

Acting in the interest of their residents, within limits imposed by Federal statute and by the Constitution, states have incentives to impose taxes on the profits of corporations owned by nonresidents. This paper presents a model within which a state, using an apportionment formula that includes...