That most corporate tax systems favor debt over equity finance is now widely recognized as, potentially, amplifying risks to financial stability. This paper makes a first attempt to explore, empirically, the link between this tax bias and the probability of financial crisis. It finds that...

Staff Discussion Notes showcase the latest policy-related analysis and research being developed by individual IMF staff and are published to elicit comment and to further debate. These papers are generally brief and written in nontechnical language, and so are aimed at a broad audience...

This study explains the variation in empirical estimates in the literature on the elasticity of foreign direct investment with respect to company tax levels. To that end, the meta analysis of De Mooij and Ederveen (2003) is extended by considering an alternative classification of the literature...

This paper explores how corporate taxes affect the financial structure of multinational banks. Guided by a simple theory of optimal capital structure it tests (i) whether corporate taxes induce subsidiary banks to raise their debt-asset ratio in light of the traditional debt bias; and (ii)...

Schemes of residual profit allocation (RPA) tax multinationals by allocating their 'routine' profits to countries in which their activities take place and sharing their remaining 'residual' profit across countries on some formulaic basis. They have recently and rapidly come to prominence in...

Unilateral adoption of transfer pricing regulations may have a negative impact on real investment by multinational corporations (MNCs). This paper uses a quasi-experimental research design, exploiting unique panel data on domestic and multinational companies in 27 countries during 2006-2014, to...

This paper explores whether corporate tax bias toward debt finance differs between banks and nonbanks, using a large panel of micro data. On average, it finds that there is no significant difference. The marginal tax effect for both banks and non-banks is close to 0.2. However, the...