IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ntj/journl/v72y2019i1p165-192.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Taxes and the Location of U.S. Business Activity Abroad

Author

Listed:
  • John Mutti
  • Eric Ohrn

Abstract

This paper updates a seminal study by Harry Grubert that suggested taxation is an important determinant of the location of U.S. business activity abroad (Grubert and Mutti, 1991). The present analysis yields three key findings. First, effective tax rates (ETRs) continue to influence U.S. Multinational Enterprises' (MNEs') location decisions, although our constant elasticity estimates are smaller than other researchers report. Second, the majority of our estimates demonstrate stability over the sample period, across several measures of business activity, and for two common tax rate specifications. Finally, we address the potential endogeneity of the tax variable, and our instrumental variable estimates are larger than baseline elasticities, especially for current year investment and research and development (R&D).

Suggested Citation

  • John Mutti & Eric Ohrn, 2019. "Taxes and the Location of U.S. Business Activity Abroad," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 72(1), pages 165-192, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:ntj:journl:v:72:y:2019:i:1:p:165-192
    DOI: 10.17310/ntj.2019.1.06
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.17310/ntj.2019.1.06
    Download Restriction: Access is restricted to subscribers and members of the National Tax Association.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17310/ntj.2019.1.06?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Robinson Reyes-Peña & Arun Upadhyay & Arun Kumaraswamy, 2023. "Foreign competitive pressure and inversions by U.S. multinational enterprises," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 54(5), pages 829-851, July.
    2. Eichfelder, Sebastian & Kluska, Mike & Knaisch, Jonas & Selle, Juliane, 2021. "Senkung der Unternehmenssteuerlast versus Förderung von Investitionen: Was ist die bessere Strategie zur Förderung der Standortattraktivität Deutschlands?," arqus Discussion Papers in Quantitative Tax Research 266, arqus - Arbeitskreis Quantitative Steuerlehre.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ntj:journl:v:72:y:2019:i:1:p:165-192. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: The University of Chicago Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.ntanet.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.