This paper empirically analyses whether both personal and corporate taxation have an impact on companies' capital structure decisions. We investigate the effect of the difference in taxation of debt and equity financing on capital structures. Our empirical results, based on a comprehensive panel...

This paper discusses the impact and the appropriateness of tax incentives for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the European Union. First, we provide a survey of implemented tax incentives specifically targeted at SMEs in the 28 EU Member States. Building hereon, we measure the impact...

Company taxes and taxes on highly skilled labour both influence the attractiveness of a particular region as a location for investment. We measure the effective tax burden on capital investment and on highly qualified labour in 33 locations across Europe and the United States. We then correlate...

This paper presents a dynamic multi-equation model based on a balance sheet identity, where technical aspects of capital structure are highlighted through separately observing debt and equity and their relationship to investment. Additionally, leverage dynamics are interpreted in their role for...

This paper investigates tax planning behavior by means of inter-company finance and the effectiveness of fighting back via thin-capitalization rules. A simple theoretical model, which considers the financing decision of a multinational company, is used to obtain empirical implications. The...

In this paper, I investigate the influence of tax incentives on the financial structures of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) conducted by multinational entities (MNE). Previous research has already found evidence for tax avoidance by debt shifting. I analyze the importance of locating debt at...

In the tax policy debate, differentiation of value-added taxes is often justified by distributional concerns. Our quantitative analysis for Germany indicates that such concerns are misplaced. We find that the abolition of VAT differentiation has only negligible redistributive effects. Instead,...

This paper examines whether investment in a risky asset depends on future circumstances. We conduct a laboratory experiment where subjects have the opportunity to invest earned income in a risky asset and, depending on randomly assigned treatment states, have the opportunity to respond to the...

In this study we investigate the relationship between religious and charitable giving. We test how income, the tax-price of giving and the German church tax, differently affect charitable donations of church members, individuals leaving church and non-church members. We find crowding in between...

The elasticity of taxable income (ETI) is often interpreted as a sufficient statistic to assess the welfare costs of taxation. Building on the conceptual framework of Chetty (2009), we show that this assertion does no longer hold for tax systems with deduction possibilities if (i) deductions...