Large multinational companies are regularly suspected of using transfer pricing of intangibles to shift profits from high- to low-tax jurisdictions. We study the optimal transfer prices while endogenizing the location choice of intangibles and considering spillovers. In line with the initial...

This paper assesses the effect of international differences in taxes on the choice of patent location by multinational enterprises (MNEs). The analysis is based on a large sample of patents and firms from the OECD-PATSTAT and OECD-ORBIS databases over 2004-10. The approach is to compare the...

Patent boxes have been heavily debated for their role in corporate tax competition. This paper uses firm-level data for the period 2000-2011 for the top 2,000 corporate research and development (R&D) investors worldwide to consider the determinants of patent registration across a large sample of...

Patent boxes have been heavily debated for their role in corporate tax competition. This paper uses firm-level data for the period 2000-2011 for the top 2,000 corporate research and development (R&D) investors worldwide to consider the determinants of patent registration across a large sample of...

Commentators on the private equity industry often claim that favorable tax treatment gives private equity firms advantages in the market for corporate control. But we show that tax advantages do not affect the equilibrium ownership of corporate assets when acquisition costs are fully deductible...

Intangible assets, like patents and trademarks, are increasingly seen as the key to competitive success and as the drivers of corporate profit. Moreover, they constitute a major source of profit shifting opportunities in multinational enterprises (MNEs) due to a highly intransparent transfer...

Intangible assets are one major source of profit shifting opportunities due to a highly intransparent transfer pricing process. Our paper argues that multinational enterprises (MNEs) optimize their profit shifting strategy by locating shifting–relevant intangible property at affiliates with a...

Numerous empirical studies have analysed the influence of corporate taxation on the location of intangible assets within a company group. However, the previous literature has rather focused on studying the impact of taxation on patent location choices assuming that these assets represent the...

We provide indirect empirical evidence of profit shifting behavior by multinational enterprises. This issue is analyzed in an econometric panel study for the years 1995 to 2005 and additionally in a cross-section for 2004 using a large micro database of European subsidiaries of multinationals...

We develop a new methodology to decompose the observed decline in multinational corporations' (MNCs') effective tax rates into profit shifting to tax havens and several other components. We apply this methodology to the best available data for MNCs headquartered in the US - from the Bureau of...