The Effects of Discretionary Fiscal Policy on Macroeconomic Aggregates: A Reappraisal

Fiscal stimuli to recover? A cascade of academic and layman-articles debate the effectiveness of fiscal policy in stimulating the economy backed up by different economic models and empirical support. This essay surveys the theoretical predictions and recent empirical Vector Autoregression (VAR) evidence on the short-run effects of discretionary fiscal policy on macroeconomic aggregates.Macroeconomic Policy, Fiscal Policy, Multipliers, Fiscal Stimulus, VAR

Money at the Docks of Tax Havens: A Guide

This essay critically revisits the roles and influences of tax havens in the world economy. It combines various massages of available studies in one scheme, documents a number of observations, and proposes several issues for future research.tax havens, tax avoidance, tax evasion, international taxation, corruption, offshore financial centres

On the monetary union of the Gulf States

This paper attempts to highlight the main characteristics of the economies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and their plan to form a monetary union by 2010. Several aspects are considered such as the pattern of trade, the monetary side, and the fiscal side. The main conclusion is that the large similarities among the GCC members reduce the costs of introducing a single currency while the small intra-trade volume reduces the benefits. Furthermore, in general the GCC states have achieved a noteworthy degree of convergence taking the European convergence criteria as a reference

A Journey from a Corruption Port to a Tax Haven

We sketch a model according to which tax havens attract corporate income generated in corrupted countries. In our framework, tax havens have two opposite effects on welfare. First, tax havens’ services have a positive effect on welfare through encouraging investment by firms fearing expropriation and bribes in corrupt countries. Second, by supporting corruption and the concealment of officials’ bribes, tax havens discourage the provision of public goods and hence have also a negative effect on welfare. The net welfare effect depends on the specified preferences and parameters. One source of this ambiguity is that the presence of multinational firms in corrupted countries is positively associated with demanding tax havens’ operations. Using firm-level data, we provide empirical support for this hypothesis.tax havens, tax avoidance, tax evasion, multinational firms, corruption

Debt Financing and Sharp Currency Depreciations: Wholly vs. Partially Owned Multinational Affiliates

This paper provides empirical evidence on two potential costs of shared ownership of German affiliates abroad. First, in periods of currency crises, wholly-owned affiliates, in contrast to partially-owned affiliates, seem to circumvent financial constraints by accessing capital from their parent companies. In terms of differences in performance regarding sales of both types of firms, wholly-owned affiliates have a significantly better sales performance than partially-owned affiliates in periods of crises. This finding contributes to the evidence that FDI helps in mitigating the negative consequences of sharp currency depreciation, and stresses that this effect works especially through capital inflows to wholly-owned affiliates. Second, the debt financing of partially-owned affiliates is less sensitive to the tax rate suggesting that partially-owned affiliates rely less on international debt shifting than wholly-owned affiliates. This indicates that partially-owned affiliates are less flexible to exploit tax efficient strategies.foreign direct investment, capital structure, ownership structure, currency crises, corporate taxation

Money at the docks of tax havens: A guide

This essay critically revisits the roles and influences of tax havens in the world economy. It combines various massages of available studies in one scheme, documents a number of observations, and proposes several issues for future research

The Effects of Taxation on the Location Decision of Multinational Firms: M&A vs. Greenfield Investments

In this study, we estimate the impacts of differences in international tax rates on the probability of choosing a location for an affiliate of a multinational firm. In particular, we distinguish between the tax sensitivity of Greenfield and M&A investments. Based on a novel firm-level dataset on German outbound FDI, we find evidence that location decisions of M&A investments are less sensitive to differences in tax rates than location decisions of Greenfield investments. According to our logit estimates, and after controlling for firm and country-specific characteristics, the tax elasticity for Greenfield investments is negative and in absolute value significantly larger than that associated with M&A investments. This finding is consistent with a (partial) capitalisation of taxes in the acquisition price when the FDI project takes the form of M&A.FDI, corporate taxation, location, M&A, Greenfield

A journey from a corruption port to a tax haven

We sketch a model according to which tax havens attract corporate income generated in corrupted countries. In our framework, tax havens have two opposite effects on welfare. First, tax havens' services have a positive effect on welfare through encouraging investment by firms fearing expropriation and bribes in corrupt countries. Second, by supporting corruption and the concealment of officials' bribes, tax havens discourage the provision of public goods and hence have also a negative effect on welfare. The net welfare effect depends on the specified preferences and parameters. One source of this ambiguity is that the presence of multinational firms in corrupted countries is positively associated with demanding tax havens' operations. Using firm-level data, we provide empirical support for this hypothesis

What Do We Know about the Tax Planning of German-Based Multinational Firms?

Abundant anecdotal evidence is in accord with rigorous research results confirming the existence of various forms of international tax planning by multinational firms. Increasing availability of administrative data for research purposes has enabled researchers to study not only behavioural responses of US-based firms to taxation, but also of European and other multinationals. The present paper summarizes what we can learn from recent studies on tax avoidance strategies by multinational firms in general and by German multinationals in particular. (authors' abstract)Series: WU International Taxation Research Paper Serie

Evaluating the Effects of ACE Systems on Multinational Debt Financing and Investment

Theory recommends aligning the tax treatment of debt and equity. A few countries, notably Belgium, have introduced an allowance for corporate equity (ACE) to achieve tax neutrality. We study the effects of adopting an ACE on debt financing, passive investment, and active investment of multinational firms, using high-quality administrative data on virtually all German-based multinationals. We use two main identification strategies, based on: (1) synthetic control methods, and (2) variations across affiliates within the multinational group. Our results suggest that an ACE reduces the corporate debt ratio of multinational affiliates. Additionally, an ACE increases intra-group lending and other forms of passive investment but has no effects on production investment of multinational affiliates. The findings indicate that a unilateral implementation of an ACE system generates a tax planning opportunity using a structure combining the benefits from the ACE with interest deductions