This study examines whether foreign institutional investors (FIIs) help explain variation in corporate tax avoidance and whether mechanisms such as tax morality, investment horizon, and corporate governance underlie the relation between FIIs and tax avoidance. We find robust evidence that FIIs...

We find that foreign institutional investors (FIIs) reduce their investee firms’ tax avoidance. We provide evidence that the effect is driven by the institutional distance between FIIs’ home countries/regions and host countries/regions. Specifically, we find that the effect is driven by the...

This study examines the association between creative corporate culture and corporate tax avoidance. We construct a novel measure of creative corporate culture through the textual analysis of public firms’ 10-K reports. We find that firms with highly creative culture avoid taxes to a greater...

We examine how the threat of low-cost activism (implemented by small shareholders) affects firms’ tax avoidance. Due to the lack of superior private information, small shareholders rely more on public information and may intervene in response to unfavorable earnings. Thus, as heightened...