The recent international agreement on a minimum effective corporate tax rate marks a profound change in global tax arrangements. The appropriate level of that minimum, however, has been, and remains, extremely contentious. This paper explores the strategic responses to a minimum tax, which-the...

A growing empirical literature has documented significant profit shifting activities by multinationals. This paper looks at the impact of such profit shifting on real activity and tax competition. Real activity can be affected as profit shifting changes-and theoretically most likely reduces-the...

We provide the first direct estimates of distribution expenses incurred by manufacturing plants and assess their importance for aggregate output. Using a novel measure from the Indian Annual Survey of Industries, we document three key facts: (1) distribution expenses are large - they amount to...

A view receiving increased support is that the height of trade costs in prime export sectors has a strong effect on current account balances: countries specializing in sectors that face relatively high trade costs, such as services, tend to run current account deficits, and similarly, countries...

This paper examines the effects of trade costs on macroeconomic volatility. We first construct a dynamic, two-country general equilibrium model, where the degree of market integration depends directly on trade costs (transport costs, tariffs, etc.). The model is a extension of Obstfeld and...

Businesses which seek the location that offers the highest profitability are likely to consider tax incentives and the level of government services available. However, once a business commits itself to a locality, high moving costs render it vulnerable to future tax increases or denial of...

This note assesses the relative efficiency of different tax bases in an open economy. If terms of trade effects are large, lump-sum taxation may be inferior to distortionary consumption or wage taxes. This result is demonstrated analytically using a simple neoclassical model. An overlapping...

Using the post-WWII data of U.S. federal corporate income tax changes, within a Smooth Transition VAR, this paper finds that the output effect of capital income tax cuts is government debt-dependent: it is less expansionary when debt is high than when it is low. To explore the mechanisms that...

The paper provides estimates of the long-run, tax-adjusted, user cost elasticity of capital (UCE) in a small open economy, exploiting three sources of variation in Canadian tax policy: across provinces, industries, and years. Estimates of the UCE with Canadian data are less prone to the...

Do reductions in capital income taxes attract foreign capital and, at the same time, foster economic growth? This paper examines the effect of capital income taxation on the international allocation of capital and on economic growth in a two-country overlapping generations model with endogenous...