This paper looks at the trade off between investment incentives and exit costs for the location of foreign direct investment (FDI). This issue does not appear to have been tackled in much detail in the literature. The analysis considers the effect of profit taxation (as a measure of investment...

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...

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...

This paper looks at the trade off between investment incentives and exit costs for the location of foreign direct investment (FDI). This issue does not appear to have been tackled in much detail in the literature. The analysis considers the effect of profit taxation (as a measure of investment...

We investigate the outcome of bilateral tax competition by analyzing Double Tax Treaties (DTT). DTTs are the crucial means of splitting a tax base between two countries. Yet, there are only few empirical results on the textual design of DTTs. We develop a novel approach to quantitatively analyze...

In the absence of financial frictions, the purpose of thin capitalization rules is to limit multinational firms’ possibilities of engaging in tax planning via debt shifting. This paper analyzes the effects of thin capitalization rules in the case where firms have limited access to external...

This paper studies the effects of political factors, mainly partisanship, on corporate taxes in the past 30 years – a period of intensifying competitive pressure in Europe. Extending the Zodrow-Mieszkowski model by decision-makers who have ideological preferences yields the hypothesis that...

The broad literature focussing on the effects of globalization and strategic interactions on corporate tax competition has widely neglected an impact of political factors. In this paper, we analyse the effects of political factors on corporate taxation and in particular the impact of...

This paper contributes to the empirical literature on the transfer pricing behavior of multinational firms. Previous research mainly focuses on transfer pricing as a means of tax optimization. Our approach concentrates on transfer pricing as a critical compliance issue. Specifically, we...