This paper shows that Investor-State Dispute Settlements (ISDS) makes multinational firms more aggressive by increasing cost-reducing investments with the aim to enlarge the potential compensation an ISDS provision may offer. While a larger investment reduces the market distortion, it will also...

There is a growing concern that governments lose substantial corporate tax revenue because of profit shifting through transfer-pricing and thin-capitalization strategies. Existing literature studies profit shifting and transfer pricing separately. In practice, the choice of debt-to-asset ratios...

This paper analyses the determinants of Chinese direct investment (DI) in the European Union (EU). Evidence is based on panel Poisson models drawing on two investment monitors for individual projects. We distinguish between the numbers of greenfield investments (GIs) and mergers and acquisitions...

This report examines China’s strategy for investing in Europe. While investing in Western Europe is primarily about obtaining access to advanced technologies, investing in Central and Eastern Europe is more about establishing a presence in the EU common market and expanding...

We study the link between a country’s institutional quality in tax collection and its optimal corporate tax policies in a model of heterogeneous multinationals that can shift income using both debt and transfer prices. Countries with weak institutional quality can be made worse off adopting...

Multinational companies can exploit the tax advantage of debt more aggressively than national companies by shifting debt from affiliates in low tax countries to affiliates in high tax countries. Previous papers have either omitted internal debt or external debt from the analysis. We are the...

The integration of emerging markets into the global economy is heavily promoted by foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows. Within the factors driving the location of FDI, regional trade agreements (RTAs) become increasingly relevant for emerging markets. We explore the impact of South-South...

China's government is promoting the shift towards a consumption-based economy since a few years. The explicit goal to significantly raise the percentage of wages in the national household income is integral part of the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-15). The changes in the economic strategy are...

China’s government is promoting the shift towards a consumption-based economy since a few years. The explicit goal to significantly raise the percentage of wages in the national household income is integral part of the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-15). The changes in the economic strategy are...

This paper analyses the development of the ratio of corporate taxes to wage taxes using a simple political economy model with internationally mobile and immobile firms. Among other results, our model predicts that countries reduce their corporate tax rate, relative to the wage tax, either when...