Investors can access foreign diversification opportunities through either foreign portfolio investment (FPI) or foreign direct investment (FDI). The worldwide tax regime employed by the U.S. potentially distorts this choice by penalizing FDI, relative to FPI, in low-tax countries. On the other...

Do firms investing abroad simultaneously reduce their domestic activity? This paper analyzes the relationship between the domestic and foreign operations of American manufacturing firms between 1982 and 2004 by instrumenting for changes in foreign operations with GDP growth rates of the foreign...

When multinational firms expand their operations in tax havens, do they divert activity from non-havens? Much of the debate on tax competition presumes that the answer to this question is yes. This paper offers a model for examining the relationship between activity in havens and non-havens, and...

This paper evaluates evidence of the impact of outbound foreign direct investment (FDI) on domestic investment rates. OECD countries with high rates of outbound FDI in the 1980s and 1990s exhibited lower domestic investment than other countries, which suggests that FDI and domestic investment...

What types of firms establish tax haven operations, and what purposes do these operations serve? Analysis of affiliate-level data for American firms indicates that larger, more international firms, and those with extensive intrafirm trade and high Ramp;D intensities, are the most likely to use...

This paper examines the expropriation of a foreign investor by a local partner and the subsequent resolution of that case through international arbitration in favor of the investor. Despite the investor's 99% interest in joint venture, the local partner managed to divert the entire value of the...

Can financial integration, particularly the cross-border investments of multinational firms, help explain the synchronization of business cycles? This paper presents evidence on the comovement of returns and investment within U.S. multinational firms to address this question. These firms...

This paper examines how costly financial contracting and weak investor protection influence the cross-border operational, financing and investment decisions of firms. We develop a model in which product developers have a comparative advantage in monitoring the deployment of their technology...

This paper evaluates the impact of capital controls and their liberalization on the activities of U.S. multinational firms. These firms attempt to circumvent capital controls by reducing reported local profitability and increasing the frequency of dividend repatriations. As a result, the...

The rise of significant inbound capital flows originating from sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) has occasioned a debate over the appropriate regulatory and tax treatment of these funds. In particular, it has been argued that the tax exemption currently enjoyed by SWFs confers an advantage on these...