Nadine Riedel

Earnings Shocks and Tax-Motivated Income-Shifting: Evidence from European Multinationals

This paper presents a new approach to estimating the existence and magnitude of tax-motivated income shifting within multinational corporations. Existing studies of income shifting use changes in corporate tax rates as a source of identification. In contrast, this paper exploits exogenous earnings shocks at the parent firm and investigates how these shocks propagate across low-tax and high-tax multinational subsidiaries. This approach is implemented using a large panel of European multinational affiliates over the period 1995-2005. The central result is that parents’ positive earnings shocks are associated with a significantly positive increase in pretax profits at low-tax affiliates, relative to the effect on the pretax profits of high-tax affiliates. The result is robust to controlling for various other differences between low-tax and high-tax affiliates and for country-pair-year fixed effects. Additional tests suggest that the estimated effect is attributable primarily to the strategic use of debt across affiliates. The magnitude of income shifting estimated using this approach is substantial, but somewhat smaller than that found in the previous literature.

There's No Place Like Home: The Profitability Gap between Headquarters and their Foreign Subsidiaries

Using data on European firms, this paper provides evidence that an overproportional fraction of multinational group profits accrues with the corporate headquarters. Quantitatively, the estimates suggest that headquarters are by around 25% more profitable than their foreign subsidiaries, whereas this gap tends to decline over time. The effect turns out to be robust against controlling for observed and unobserved heterogeneity between the entities. Analogous (although quantitatively smaller) effects are found for national groups. We discuss various welfare implications of our findings.

Corporate Taxation and the Quality of Research and Development

This paper examines the impact of tax incentives on corporate research and development (R&D) activity. Traditionally, R&D tax incentives have been provided in the form of special tax allowances and tax credits. In recent years, several countries moreover reduced their income tax rates on R&D output (patent boxes). Previous papers have shown that all three tax instruments are effective in raising the quantity of R&D related activity. We provide evidence that, beyond this quantity effect, corporate taxation also distorts the quality of R&D projects, i.e. their innovativeness and revenue potential. Using rich data on corporate patent applications to the European patent o ffice, we find that a low tax rate on patent income is instrumental in attracting innovative projects with a high earnings potential and innovation level. The effect is statistically signi ficant and economically relevant and prevails in a number of sensitivity checks. R&D tax credits and tax allowances are in turn not found to exert a statistically significant impact on project quality.

Assessing the Localization Pattern of German Manufacturing and Service Industries: A Distance-based Approach

Koh H.-J. and Riedel N. Assessing the localization pattern of German manufacturing and service industries: a distance-based approach, Regional Studies. This paper assesses the agglomeration pattern of four-digit industries in Germany using a rich data set on the population of German firms. To identify geographical agglomeration, the distance-based approach of Duranton and Overman of 2005 is followed. It is found that the location pattern of 71% of the manufacturing industries departs from randomness in the sense that plants exhibit significant geographical localization. In line with previous studies for the United Kingdom and France, the analysis suggests that especially traditional manufacturing industries exhibit strong localization patterns. Moreover, it is found that geographical localization is not restricted to the manufacturing sector, but that it plays an equally important role for service industries.

Quantifying International Tax Avoidance: A Review of the Academic Literature

Abstract This paper provides a brief review of the academic literature that assesses the quantitative importance of tax avoidance behaviour of multinational entities (MNEs) by means of income shifting from high-tax to low-tax affiliates. Existing studies unanimously report evidence in line with tax-motivated profit shifting (despite using different data sources and estimation strategies). In terms of shifting channels, there is evidence consistent with strategic mispricing of intra-firm trade, the location of valuable intellectual property at low-tax affiliates and debt-shifting activities. The quantitative estimates vary across approaches and studies though. The paper moreover stresses that some care should be warranted when interpreting profit shifting estimates as they often rely on non-trivial assumptions.

He's a Chip Off the Old Block — The Persistence of Occupational Choices Across Generations

The purpose of this paper is to assess if parents exert an influence on the occupation choices of their children. Using data from the German Socioeconomic Panel (SOEP), we find a high persistency of occupational decisions across fathers and children using nested and conditional logit models. To separate effects related to genetic factors (nature) and parental education or role models (nurture), we determine the persistency separately for children who grew up with their biological fathers and for those who did not. Our results suggest that especially nurture plays a decisive role in explaining the choice of ones occupation.

Verschärfen multinationale Unternehmen den Steuerwettbewerb

Zusammenfassung In diesem Beitrag werden anhand eines einfachen Modells des Steuerwettbewerbs aktuelle empirische Studien zu Steuerwirkungen auf unternehmerische Entscheidungen diskutiert. Insbesondere die Rolle multinationaler Unternehmen steht dabei im Fokus der Untersuchung, sowie die Frage, ob und inwiefern multinationale Unternehmen den Steuerwettbewerb zwischen Staaten verschärfen. Neuere empirische Analysen zeigen, dass sich der Steuerwettbewerb mit der Zunahme international tätiger Firmen eher abschwächen als verschärfen könnte.