This paper examines the impact of tax incentives on corporate research and development (R&D) activity. Traditionally, R&D tax incentives have been provided in the form of special tax allowances and tax credits. In recent years, several countries moreover reduced their income tax rates on R&D...

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...

This paper assesses the agglomeration pattern of four-digit industries in Germany using a rich data set on the population of German firms. To identify geographical agglomeration, we follow the distance based approach of Duranton and Overman (2005) and find that the location pattern of 78% of our...

This paper presents a new approach to estimating the existence and magnitude of taxmotivated 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...

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 (obligations)...

This paper examines how restrictions on the tax-deductibility of interest cost affect location choices of multinational corporations (MNCs). Many countries have introduced so-called thin-capitalization rules (TCRs) to prevent MNCs from shifting tax base to countries with lower tax rates. As of...

In recent years several countries have augmented their national tax laws by transfer pricing legislations which intend to limit the leeway of multinational firms to exploit international corporate tax rate differences and relocate profit to low-tax affiliates by distorting intra-firm transfer...

The purpose of this paper is to assess intergenerational occupational mobility in Germany. Using data from the Socioeconomic Panel (SOEP), we find a high persistence of occupational choices across fathers and children. To separate effects related to parental advice and influence (nurture) from...

We empirically assess international corporate tax avoidance by strategic location of innovative output. The analysis draws on the universe of patent applications to the European Patent Office linked with data on multinational entities (MNEs) in Europe. Four findings emerge: Firstly, patent...