We use a laboratory experiment to investigate the behavioral effects of obligations that are not backed by binding deterrent incentives. To implement such `expressive law' we introduce different levels of very weakly incentivized, symmetric and asymmetric minimum contribution levels...

This paper investigates whether the institution of life time tenure for public sector employees affects the selection of workers into private and public sector occupation. Precisely, we argue that more generous employment protection for public sector employees may induce risk averse individuals...

This paper investigates corporate taxation under separate accounting (SA) and formula apportionment (FA) in a model with union wage bargaining and multinational firms. Under SA, we find that increases in the corporate tax rate raise the wage level of domestic workers, while they lower the...

This paper presents a new approach to estimating the existence and magnitude of tax-motivated income shifting within multinational corporations. Existing studies of income shifting use changes in corporate tax rates as a source of identification. In contrast, this paper exploits exogenous...

This paper measures the relative importance of quality and quantity effects of corporate taxation on foreign direct investment. Quantity is affected if corporate taxes reduce the equilibrium stock of foreign capital in a given country. Quality effects arise if taxes decrease the extent to which...

In the debate on the impact of illicit capital flows on developing countries, the view is widespread that profit shifting to low tax jurisdictions undermines the ability of developing countries to raise tax revenue. While the shifting of income out of developed countries is a widely debated...

Using the German local business tax as a testing ground, we empirically investigate the impact of firm agglomeration on municipal tax setting behavior. The analysis exploits a rich data source on the population of German firms to construct detailed measures for the communities' agglomeration...

This paper stresses the special role of multinational headquarters in corporate profit shifting strategies. Using a large panel of European firms, we show that multinational enterprises (MNEs) are reluctant to shift profits away from their headquarters even if these are located in high-tax...

Using a large data set of European firms, this paper provides evidence that operations at multinational headquarters are significantly more profitable than operations at their foreign subsidiaries. The effect turns out to be robust and quantitatively large. Our findings suggest that the...

Corporate patents are perceived to be the key profit-drivers in many multinational enterprises (MNEs). Moreover, as the transfer pricing process for royalty payments is often highly intransparent, they also constitute a major source of profit shifting opportunities between multinational...