The paper investigates the role of holding companies and conduit entities in German inbound and outbound FDI. It identifies the relevant conduit countries that act as stepping stones. Several tax and non-tax factors for the set-up of indirect structures are empirically identified. Withholding...

This paper reviews the recent literature on the relocation of headquarters (HQs). Overall results show that full and direct international relocations of corporate HQs are rare events. However, there is a trend that MNEs increasingly unbundle their HQs so as to spread their different HQs...

Multinational corporations can shift income into low-tax countries through transfer pricing and debt financing. While most developed countries use thin capitalization rules to limit the extent to which a subsidiary can be financed with internal debt, a number of developing countries do not. In...

This paper explores the effects of tax provisions aimed at restricting multinationals’ tax planning on foreign direct investment (FDI). Using a unique dataset which allows us to observe the worldwide activities of a large panel of multinational firms, we test how limitations of interest tax...

This paper models inter-jurisdiction competition for foreign direct investment and optimal government policy intervention to protect the national interest. The inter-jurisdiction competition for a multinational has the potential of favouring the multinational and of becoming detrimental for the...

We show that the international distribution of ownership of the incumbent firms within a host region matters for the efficiency of the fiscal competition between the region’s constituent countries for a new FDI project. If incumbent firms are owned entirely within the host region, then the new...

This paper looks at a county’s central government optimal policy in a setting where its two identical local regions compete for the attraction of footloose multinationals to their sites, and where the considered multinationals strictly prefer this country to the rest of the world. For the sake...

We examine the impact of bilateral and multilateral tax treaties on bilateral FDI stocks. First, we present panel regressions of the effects of treaties on FDI based on an extensive database of all OECD countries from 1985 onwards. We use geographic instruments to correct for the endogeneity of...

This paper assesses the extent and policy implications of simultaneous competition among countries on both corporate tax rates and the provision of public goods used by firms as production factors (‘public factors’). First, we derive the relevant theoretical results in a unified framework...