In some countries around the world, the advantages of globalisation have been increasingly called into question recently. In particular, takeovers by foreign firms raise suspicions of technology theft and job cuts at the newly acquired local plant. By looking at Germany, as a large open economy,...

Tax incentives are a key component of governments’ investment policy mix as they directly impact companies’ tax burden. In this paper, we illustrate the EU’s tax attractiveness as investment location over time in terms of effective average tax rates and evaluate potential tax reform...

One of the main stylised facts that has emerged from the recent literature on global value chains is that bilateral trade imbalances in gross terms can differ substantially from those measured in value added terms. However, the factors underlying the extent and sign of the differences between...

We present a simple model to illustrate how birthplace diversity may affect team performance. The model assumes that birthplace diversity increases the stock of available knowledge due to skill complementarities and decreases effciency due to communication barriers. The consequence of these two...

This paper provides the first in-depth study of the organization of knowledge in multinational firms. The paper develops a theoretical model that studies how firms optimally split knowledge between their headquarters and their production plants if communication costs impede the access of...

This paper analyzes whether a corporate tax cut reduces profit shifting to low-tax countries. I use firm-level data of 2,812 German corporations around the Business Tax Reform in 2008. Applying a difference-in-differences framework with a one-on-one matching strategy, which compares earnings of...

This paper provides the first in-depth study of the organization of knowledge in multinational firms. In the theory, knowledge is a costly input for firms that they can acquire at their headquarters or their production plants. Communication costs impede the access of the plants to headquarter...