This paper studies financial service provision booked through offshore financial centers (OFCs). Based on several novel data sources and recent advances in event study methodology, I exploit the natural experiment of re-occurring hurricanes hitting small islands and compare local reactions to...

Little is known about how banks shift profits to low-tax countries. Because of their specific business model, banks use profit shifting channels different from those of other firms. We propose a novel and bank-specific method of profit shifting: the strategic relocation of proprietary trading to...

We set up a two-country, regional model of trade in financial services. Competitive firms in each country manufacture untraded consumer goods in an uncertain productive environment, borrowing funds from a bank in either the home or the foreign market. Duopolistic banks can choose their levels of...

Increasing attention has been given to the fact that some multinational enterprises shift income to tax haven countries, an activity that generates inequality in corporate taxation. Here, we examine how profit shifting relates to wage inequality. Using rich matched employer-employee data from...

Following numerous high-profile international initiatives, tax haven jurisdictions have been nudged into agreeing on tax information exchange. We analyse whether these agreements had measurable effects on the economy of cooperative tax havens. As GDP data are missing for many small tax haven...

This paper analyzes how corporate taxation and regulatory requirements affect the location of financial sector FDI. We use novel information on new financial services entities established by multinational firms in 83 host countries. We find a negative effect of host country taxes on the...

This paper focuses on the consequences of cross-border banking and entry of multi-national banks (MNBs) for banking supervision and regulation. When a MNB expands internationally with subsidiaries, the MNB operates under the legislation of several countries - both the home country and the host...

We analyze the microeconomic determinants of cross-border bank acquisitions in 16 transition economies over the period 1996-2006. By using a latent class discrete choice model we explicitly incorporate the macroeconomic and institutional heterogeneity of the transition economies into our...

This paper develops a competition theory framework that evaluates an important aspect of the OECD's Harmful Tax Practices Initiative against tax havens. We show that the sequential nature of the process is harmful and more costly than a "big bang" multilateral agreement. The sequentiality may...