Beginning in early 2011, crude oil production in the U.S. Midwest and Canada surpassed the pipeline capacity to transport it to the Gulf Coast where it could access the world oil market. As a result, the U.S. "benchmark" crude oil price in Cushing, Oklahoma, declined substantially relative to...

Crude oil production in the United States increased by nearly 80 percent between 2008 and 2016, mostly in areas that were far from existing refining and pipeline infrastructure. The production increase led to substantial discounts for oil producers to reflect the high cost of alternative...

We assess the role of economic and security considerations in the currency composition of international reserves. We contrast the “Mercury hypothesis” that currency choice is governed by pecuniary factors familiar to the literature, such as economic size and credibility of major reserve...

We empirically examine two competing views of CEO pay. In the contracting view, pay is used to solve an agency problem: the compensation committee optimally chooses pay contracts which give the CEO incentives to maximize shareholder wealth. In the skimming view, pay is the result of an agency...

We use a new micro data set that covers all oil fields in the world to estimate a stochastic industry-equilibrium model of the oil industry with two alternative market structures. In the first, all firms are competitive. In the second, OPEC firms act as a cartel. This effort is a first step...

In this paper, we examine executive compensation data from 78 major U.S. oil and gas companies over a 24-year period. Perhaps in no other industry are the fortunes of so many executives so dependent on a single global commodity price. We find that a 10% increase in oil prices is associated with...

We estimate and attempt to explain the evolution of the taxes paid by U.S. multinationals on their foreign profits since 1966. In the oil sector, taxes paid to oil-producing States have been contained, allowing U.S. firms to earn high after-tax returns. Foreign taxes fell abruptly after the...

This paper analyzes the interaction between corporate taxes and corporate governance. We show that the characteristics of a taxation system affect the extraction of private benefits by company insiders. A higher tax rate increases the amount of income insiders divert and thus worsens governance...

Economic research on transfer-pricing behavior by multinational corporadons has emphasized theoretical modeling and institutional description. This paper presents the fiit systematic empirical analysis of transfer prices, using data from the petroleum industry. On the basis of oil imported into...

This report examines how oil and gas production generates revenue for local governments in eight states through four key mechanisms: (i) state taxes or fees on oil and gas production; (ii) local property taxes on oil and gas property; (iii) leasing of state-owned land; and (iv) leasing of...