The exceptional export performance of foreign-owned firms is a well-established stylized fact, but the underlying mechanism is not yet fully understood. In this paper, we provide theory and empirical evidence demonstrating that this fact can be explained by ownership differences in access to...

While countries make use of a wide range of policies to attract multinational firms, identifying the effect of such policies is difficult. Combining firm-level data on both the location of these firms' foreign affiliates and detailed service-specific information from Costa Rica's investment...

Previous empirical studies suggest that decentralization, measured by the number of government layers, is associated with less foreign direct investment (FDI). With an improved dataset on tax autonomy of sub-federal government tiers, we present evidence that fiscal decentralization (de facto)...

Many countries have introduced patent box regimes in recent years, offering a reduced tax rate to businesses for their IP-related income. Patent boxes are supposed to increase innovative activity, but they are also suspected to aim at attracting inward profit shifting from multinational...

In recent years Chinese acquisitions abroad have increased significantly. This paper uses a large dataset on cross-border M&A deals to investigate whether Chinese foreign acquisitions differ from acquisitions coming from other countries. We find that Chinese acquirers buy targets with lower...

This paper shows how the distribution of the ownership of multinational companies and the labour market conditions, especially the wage formation process, influence the outcome of interjurisdictional tax competition and coordination. In particular, it sets forth that equilibrium corporate tax...

The countries comprising the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) are currently not very integrated into global value chains (GVCs), potentially missing out on important development opportunities. Accordingly, we explore high level options for promoting their integration. Given East Asia's...

We exploit exogenous variation in tax notches created by controlled foreign corporation (CFC) rules to better understand the profit-shifting behavior of multinational enterprises (MNEs) and its consequences for real activity. Using new data on CFC rules and information on direct parent-affiliate...

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) increasingly impose "Responsible Sourcing" (RS) standards on their suppliers worldwide, including requirements on worker compensation, benefits and working conditions. Are these policies just "hot air" or do they impact exposed suppliers and their workers? What...

This paper uses micro data from country-by-country reporting of more than 3600 large multinational companies operating in 238 jurisdictions to analyze global profit shifting to avoid taxes. These companies report 7% of their global profits in jurisdictions with effective average tax rates below...