IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/btx/wpaper/0828.html

Taxes, Institutions and Foreign Diversification Opportunities

Author

Listed:
  • Mihir A. Desai

    (Harvard University and NBER)

  • Dhammika Dharmapala

    (University of Connecticut)

Abstract

Investors can access foreign diversification opportunities through either foreign portfolio investment (FPI) or foreign direct investment (FDI). The worldwide tax regime employed by the U.S. potentially distorts this choice by penalizing FDI, relative to FPI, in low-tax countries. On the other hand, weak investor protections in foreign countries may increase the value of control, creating an incentive to use FDI rather than FPI. By combining data on US outbound FPI and FDI, this paper analyzes whether the composition of US outbound capital flows reflects these incentives to bypass home and host country institutional regimes. The results suggest that the residual tax on US multinational firms’ foreign earnings skews the composition of outbound capital flows - a 10% decrease in a foreign country’s corporate tax rate increases US investors’ equity FPI holdings by approximately 10%, controlling for effects on FDI. Investor protections also seem to shape portfolio choices, though these results are not robust when only withincountry variation is employed.

Suggested Citation

  • Mihir A. Desai & Dhammika Dharmapala, 2008. "Taxes, Institutions and Foreign Diversification Opportunities," Working Papers 0828, Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation.
    • Handle: RePEc:btx:wpaper:0828
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/Business_Taxation/Docs/Publications/Working_Papers/Series_08/WP0828.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Fatica, Serena, 2009. "Taxation and the quality of institutions: asymmetric effects on FDI," MPRA Paper 24179, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Jun 2010.
    2. Dhammika Dharmapala, 2008. "What problems and opportunities are created by tax havens?," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 24(4), pages 661-679, winter.
    3. Klimek Artur, 2015. "Institutions and Outward Foreign Direct Investment," International Journal of Management and Economics, Warsaw School of Economics, Collegium of World Economy, vol. 46(1), pages 101-119, June.
    4. Liberini, Federica, "undated". "Corporate Taxes and the Growth of the Firm," Economic Research Papers 270243, University of Warwick - Department of Economics.
    5. repec:onb:oenbwp:y::i:142:b:1 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Mishra, Anil V. & Ratti, Ronald A., 2014. "Taxation of domestic dividend income and foreign investment holdings," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 218-231.
    7. Herrmann, Sabine & Kleinert, Jörn, 2014. "Lucas paradox and allocation puzzle: Is the euro area different?," Discussion Papers 06/2014, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    8. Desai, Mihir A. & Dharmapala, Dhammika, 2009. "Taxes, institutions and foreign diversification opportunities," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(5-6), pages 703-714, June.
    9. repec:grz:wpaper:2014-01 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Aleksandra Riedl & Silvia Rocha-Akis, 2012. "How elastic are national corporate income tax bases in OECD countries? The role of domestic and foreign tax rates," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 45(2), pages 632-671, May.
    11. Mihir A. Desai & Dhammika Dharmapala, 2007. "Taxes and Portfolio Choice: Evidence from JGTRRA's Treatment of International Dividends," NBER Working Papers 13281, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Mishra, Anil V., 2014. "Australia's home bias and cross border taxation," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 108-123.
    13. Mishra, Anil V. & Ratti, Ronald A., 2013. "Home bias and cross border taxation," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 169-193.
    14. Abid, Fathi & Bahloul, Slah, 2011. "Selected MENA countries' attractiveness to G7 investors," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 28(5), pages 2197-2207, September.
    15. Arulampalam, Wiji & Devereux, Michael P. & Liberini, Federica, 2019. "Taxes and the location of targets," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 176(C), pages 161-178.
    16. Aleksandra Riedl & Silvia Rocha-Akis, 2007. "Testing the tax competition theory: How elastic are national tax bases in western Europe?," Department of Economics Working Papers wuwp112, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Department of Economics.
    17. Jiandong Ju & Shang-Jin Wei, 2010. "Domestic Institutions and the Bypass Effect of Financial Globalization," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 2(4), pages 173-204, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • F21 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - International Investment; Long-Term Capital Movements
    • F23 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - Multinational Firms; International Business
    • G30 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - General
    • H25 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Business Taxes and Subsidies

    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:btx:wpaper:0828. 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: Dongxian Guo The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask Dongxian Guo to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sbsoxuk.html .

    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.