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)...

Is ownership change an opportunity for new owners to make systematic changes in the workforce of the acquired plant? We document changes to the workforce along observable and unobservable dimensions of worker quality around ownership change using matched employeremployee data. We observe above...

The paper analyzes the effects of a regionally coordinated profit tax in a model with three active countries, one of which is not part of the union, and a globally mobile firm. We show that regional tax coordination can lead to two types of welfare gains. First, for investments that would take...

We quantify the relationships between deep trade liberalization and foreign direct investment (FDI). To this end, we focus on the effects of Deep Trade Agreements (DTAs), and we rely on a structural framework that simultaneously enables us to (i) estimate the direct impact of DTAs on FDI, (ii)...

Theory recommends aligning the tax treatment of debt and equity. A few countries, notably Belgium, have introduced an allowance for corporate equity (ACE) to achieve tax neutrality. We study the effects of adopting an ACE on debt financing, passive investment, and active investment of...

There is ample evidence that internal capital markets incur efficiency costs for multinational enterprises (MNEs). This paper analyzes whether tax avoidance behavior interacts with the costs of running an internal capital market and how policies of competing governments respond to it. We show...

The issue of tax-motivated income shifting within multinational firms has attracted increasing global attention in recent years. It is of central importance to many current policy debates, including those related to recent initiatives by the OECD on base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) and to...

Motivated by the EU Commission s suggested company tax reforms, this paper investigates how cross-border loss offset and formulary apportionment of a consolidated tax base affect the investment and transfer pricing behaviour of a multijurisdictional firm, and how they affect the behaviour of...

Advance pricing agreements (APAs) determine transfer prices for intra-firm transactions in advance. This paper interprets these contracts as a means to overcome a hold-up problem that occurs because governments cannot commit to non-excessive future tax rates. In addition, with private...