Michael Stimmelmayr: Katalogdaten im Herbstsemester 2022

NameHerr Dr. Michael Stimmelmayr
Adresse
Professur f. Öffentliche Finanzen
ETH Zürich, LEE G 124
Leonhardstrasse 21
8092 Zürich
SWITZERLAND
Telefon+41 44 632 85 41
E-Mailstimmelmayr@ethz.ch
DepartementManagement, Technologie und Ökonomie
BeziehungDozent

NummerTitelECTSUmfangDozierende
363-1037-00LFiscal Competition and Multinational Firms3 KP2VM. Köthenbürger, M. Stimmelmayr
KurzbeschreibungThe course enables students to understand how multinational firms respond to differential tax regimes in a global economy and how countries strategically use the tax system to host multinationals. In particular, the course covers transfer pricing issues, internal financing decisions and agency problems and their relation to tax policy.
Lernziel- Understanding how taxes influence decisions of multinational firms

- Develop thinking about the strategic use of differential tax systems for multinational firms

- Evaluate options for governments to respond to the tax planning behavior of multinational firms

- Using theoretical models and empirical analysis to uncover regularities in how multinational firms respond to taxes
InhaltMultinational firms have grown in importance in recent decades. Given that their affiliates are located in different countries, they face various tax systems. This creates complexity with respect to the operation of a multinational firm, but also offers the option to benefit from differences across various tax provisions. Starting from this observation, the course looks at how multinational firms respond to the differences in tax provisions and how governments will respond to this behavior in its choice of tax systems. Different channels how multinational firms allocate taxable profits across countries will be analyzed: transfer pricing policies, internal financing decisions and investments. A particular emphasis will be put on how agency problems within multinational firms interact with tax avoidance behavior and how they are related to tax policy.
The course has two parts: The first part of the lecture contains a detailed treatment of the different channels multinational firms can use to strategically allocate profits to low-tax countries and how the tax avoidance decision might interfere with other decisions of the multinational firm. Building on this insight, we will discuss whether governments might strategically choose to adjust its tax provisions either to benefit from the multinational firm tax-saving behavior or to protect its tax base against the tax-planning behavior. In the second part of the course, we will discuss different papers that empirically analyze the validity of the different channels we have discussed in the first part. Students select one paper out of a list of papers (to be distributed in the course) and give a short presentation of the paper (max. 30 minutes). Afterwards, we will enter a discussion of the presented paper and clarify unaddressed issues.