Country-by-Country Reports statistics – a new perspective to multinational enterprises Descriptive analysis of national and foreign MNEs with a local presence in Italy

This paper describes the global allocation of activities of Italian multinational enterprises as emerging from the first collection of Country-by-Country Reports (CbCR), the new reporting tool to be filed by multinational enterprises under Action 13 of the G20/OECD BEPS Project. By making use of a new dataset based on microdata collected by CbCR filings, this paper addresses the following questions: where are the activities of Italian MNEs distributed internationally? Does the geographical allocation differ for profits, tangible assets, revenues or employees? How does the allocation differ by sectors? How is the global allocation of Italian MNEs different from that of foreign MNEs? Overall the analysis suggests that the global reach of Italian MNEs is relatively smaller compared to foreign MNEs and that domestic activities still represent a significant share of their global activities. Foreign activities are mostly concentrated in high income countries. Middle income countries present a relatively higher importance in terms of tangible assets and employees than they do in terms of revenues and profits, while the opposite holds for Investment hubs, accounting for a higher share of profits and revenues than they do in terms of tangible assets and employees.