We examine the effect of government ownership on tax evasion in China. After correcting for the partial observability of tax evasion, we find that state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are more likely to evade taxes and less likely to be detected than non-SOEs. After being caught for tax evasion, SOEs...

We investigate whether and how the federal judiciary affects corporate tax planning. We find that firms engage in less aggressive tax planning when Circuit Court and Tax Court judges are more liberal. This effect is economically significant and robust across various measures of tax planning. We...

We investigate the link between foreign competition and corporate tax planning. We find that a one standard deviation increase in import competition leads to a reduction of 9% in firms’ effective tax rates relative to standard levels. Further, we document that our evidence is robust to a...

We examine the impact of managerial mood on corporate tax avoidance—a ubiquitous corporate decision. Using variation in local sunshine as exogenous shocks to managerial mood, we report strong, robust evidence that negative mood induced by cloudy weather leads firms to undertake more aggressive...