During the financial crisis, G20 countries compelled tax havens to sign bilateral treaties providing for exchange of bank information. Policymakers have celebrated this global initiative as the end of bank secrecy. Exploiting a unique panel dataset, our study is the first attempt to assess how...

This paper develops a model where firms can shift profits to tax havens by means of intra-firm loans and countries can protect themselves against profit shifting by taxing cross-border interest flows. The model considers two countries with a scope for welfare improving economic integration. The...

Bank deposits in offshore financial centers may be used to evade taxes on interest income. A recent EU reform limits the scope for this type of tax evasion by introducing a withholding tax on interest income earned by EU households in Switzerland and several other offshore centers. This paper...

We present a model of tax competition for real investment and profits and show that the presence of tax havens in some cases increases the tax revenue of countries. In the first part of the paper, we argue that tax competition for profits is likely to be imperfect in the sense that the...

This paper provides evidence that asset testing of social transfers substantially depresses the liquid wealth of the poor. Our setting is Denmark where the low-income elderly receive an annual payment (around $3,000) if their end-of-year liquid wealth is below a threshold (around $15,000). Using...