Prior research has documented a substantial “lockout” effect resulting from the current U.S. worldwide tax and financial reporting systems. We hypothesize that foreign firms are tax- favored acquirers because they can avoid the U.S. tax on repatriations. Consistent with this tax advantage,...

Income taxes are a major expense for profitable corporations, oftentimes 25 percent or more of pretax income. This study exploits a setting – the market for corporate control – to test competing agency-based and risk-based explanations of corporate tax planning. Exploiting the staggered...

Harris and O’Brien (2018) investigate whether U.S. tax policy distorts U.S. multinationals’ (MNCs) investment. They find that MNCs facing higher repatriation tax costs engage in fewer domestic acquisitions. The study re-examines the results in two prior studies that found no effect (Hanlon...