Publications

2015
Working Paper

Executives' Financial Preferences and Shareholder Tax Outcomes

By: Gerardo Pérez Cavazos and Andreya M. Perez-Silva

We demonstrate that executives’ personal financial preferences impact both layers of shareholder taxes, corporate taxes and corporate payouts. We reconstruct executives’ insider equity portfolios to quantify their personal incentives and analyze stock sales that reveal... View Details

Keywords: Executives; Capital Gain; Dividends; Effective Tax Rate; Tax Avoidance; Taxation; Management Teams; Business and Shareholder Relations

November 2013 (Revised March 2014)
Technical Note

Tax Havens

By: Eric Werker, Sebastian Berardi, Stelios Elia, Omar Muakkassa and James Zumberge

Multinational corporations and wealthy individuals often use so-called tax havens to establish subsidiaries or holding companies in order to rebalance profits across borders with the primary purpose of lowering their effective tax rate. This note describes the use of... View Details

Keywords: Tax Havens; Saving; Taxation

Educators

Purchase

20 Jan 2013
News

How to slash the US corporate tax rate

Fast Answer

Tax rates (by U.S. state)

Administrators: Website includes state comparisons of income, sales, and excise tax rates. Under the menu for Divisions and Programs, select Research & Tax View Details

2021
Working Paper

International Evidence on the Effects of a Local Presence by U.S. Credit Rating Agencies

By: Liran Eliner, Michael Machokoto and Anywhere Sikochi

Major U.S. credit rating agencies are criticized for failing to understand developments in other economies and thereby impeding capital access by assigning lower ratings. Consistent with this, we find that Moody's and S&P credit ratings are more favorable after the... View Details

Keywords: Credit Rating Agencies; Credit Ratings; Rating Adjustments; Rating Disagreement; Geographic Proximity; Soft Information; Credit; Geographic Location; Local Range

February 2011
Article

Dividend Taxes and International Portfolio Choice

By: Mihir Desai and Dhammika Dharmapala

This paper investigates how dividend taxes influence portfolio choices, using the response to the distinctive treatment of a subset of foreign dividends in the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act (JGTRRA) of 2003. An open-economy after-tax capital asset... View Details

Keywords: Dividends; Portfolio Choice; Taxes; Tax Treaties; Foreign Portfolio Investment; Taxation; Lawfulness; Economy; Price; Equity; Stocks; Investment Portfolio; Opportunities; Behavior; United States

01 Dec 2011
News

A Modest Tax Proposal

complex transactionsÂ to countries exempt from US tax.) Second, Congress should levy a 20 percent tax on US corporate profits in any country with an effective corporateÂ tax... View Details

Keywords: Robert C. Pozen; tax holidays

March 2017
Article

Institutional Ownership and Corporate Tax Avoidance: New Evidence

By: Mozaffar N. Khan, Suraj Srinivasan and Liang Tan

We provide new evidence on the agency theory of corporate tax avoidance (Slemrod, 2004; Crocker and Slemrod, 2005; Chen and Chu, 2005) by showing that increases in institutional ownership are associated with increases in tax avoidance. Using the Russell index... View Details

Keywords: Tax Avoidance; Agency Costs; Institutional Ownership; Private Ownership; Crime and Corruption; Taxation; Agency Theory

2004
Working Paper

Economic Effects of Regional Tax Havens

By: Mihir A. Desai, C. Fritz Foley and James R. Hines Jr.

2020
Chapter

Reserve Accumulation, Sovereign Debt, and Exchange Rate Policy

By: Laura Alfaro and Fabio Kanczuk

In the past decade, foreign participation in local-currency bond markets in emerging countries increased dramatically. Additionally, emerging countries are increasingly deviating from inflation targeting regimes, managing their exchange rate and engaging in... View Details

Keywords: Reserves; Exchange Rate; Sovereign Finance; Currency Exchange Rate; Policy

January 2020
Article

The Job Rating Game: Revolving Doors and Analyst Incentives

By: Elisabeth Kempf

Investment banks frequently hire analysts from rating agencies. While many argue that this "revolving door" creates captured analysts, it can also create incentives to improve accuracy. To study this issue, I construct an original dataset, linking analysts to their... View Details

Keywords: Credit Rating Agencies; Investment Banking; Recruitment; Performance Evaluation; Financial Services Industry

Article

The Effects of Interest Rates on Mortgage Prepayments

By: Jerry R. Green and John B. Shoven

Research Summary

Tax evasion

Tax evasion generates billions of dollars of losses in government revenue and creates large distortions, especially in developing countries. A growing, mostly theoretical literature argues that information flows are central to understanding effective taxation.... View Details

17 Apr 2012
News

Apple, Google, Amazon Pay Corporate Income Tax Well Below Official Rate

November 2020
Article

The Role of Taxes in the Disconnect Between Corporate Performance and Economic Growth

By: Urooj Khan, Suresh Nallareddy and Ethan Rouen

We investigate the relation between the growth in corporate profits and the overall U.S. economy, focusing on the impact of the U.S. corporate tax regime on this relation. We document that the growth of corporate profits, on average, has outpaced the growth of the... View Details

Keywords: Taxes; Gdp; Corporate Profits; American Jobs Creation Act Of 2004; Taxation; Economic Growth; Profit; United States

2018
Working Paper

Corporate Tax Cuts Increase Income Inequality

By: Suresh Nallareddy, Ethan Rouen and Juan Carlos Suárez Serrato

This paper studies the effects of corporate tax changes on income inequality. Using state corporate tax rate changes as a setting, we show that cutting state corporate tax rates leads to increases in income inequality. This result is robust to using regression and... View Details

Keywords: Business Ventures; Taxation; Income; Equality and Inequality; United States

2017
Working Paper

The Role of Taxes in the Disconnect Between Corporate Performance and Economic Growth

By: Urooj Khan, Suresh Nallareddy and Ethan Rouen

We investigate the relation between the growth in corporate profits and the overall U.S. economy, focusing on the impact of the U.S. corporate tax regime on this relation. We document that the growth of corporate profits, on average, has outpaced the growth of the... View Details

Keywords: Taxes; Gdp; Corporate Profits; American Jobs Creation Act Of 2004; Taxation; Economic Growth; Profit; United States

29 Jun 2012
Working Paper Summaries

Trade Credit and Taxes

Keywords: by Mihir A. Desai, C. Fritz Foley & James R. Hines

March 2016
Article

Trade Credit and Taxes

By: Mihir Desai, C. Fritz Foley and James R. Hines Jr.

This paper analyzes the extent to which firms use trade credit to reallocate capital in response to tax incentives. Tax-induced differences in pretax returns encourage the use of trade credit to reallocate capital from firms facing low tax rates to those facing high... View Details

Keywords: Taxation; Trade; Credit; Capital