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...

The purpose of this paper is to test for spatial enforcement spillovers. Empirical testing ground is the enforcement of business taxes in South Africa. The analysis relies on the population of business tax returns for the years 2009 to 2014 and data on all business taxpayer audits by the South...

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...

This paper provides the first theoretical and empirical analysis of how taxation shapes the joint allocation of risk and profits inside the multinational firm. Theoretically, we show that unconstrained firms optimally allocate all their risk to high-tax countries to maximize risk sharing with...

In 2008 and 2014, the South African Revenue Service (SARS) did snapshot synchronizations of its business tax registry with the country’s commercial register in an attempt to identify firms that are non-compliant with their obligation to register with SARS for business tax purposes. We analyse...