An Analysis of Double Taxation Treaties and their Effect on Foreign Direct Investment

Double taxation treaties (DTTs) are intended to eliminate double taxation and thereby increase foreign direct investment (FDI). DTTs are also meant to prevent tax evasion which previous literature argues has a negative effect on FDI. Using matching econometrics and a large data set of developed to less developed country-pairs, I show that despite their intentions and the significant costs of entering into DTTs, the treaties have no effect on the flows of FDI. An analysis of the treaties in conjunction with the related domestic tax legislation shows why this is the case. Developed countries unilaterally provide for the relief of double taxation and the prevention of fiscal evasion regardless of the treaty status of a host country. This eliminates the key economic benefit and the risk that these treaties would otherwise create for the FDI location decisions of multinational enterprises.     

Technology transfer and spillovers in international joint ventures

It is often argued that multinationals are reluctant to transfer technology due to the fear of spillovers. We show that this need not be the case if host country policies like taxation are taken into account. Furthermore, we examine the incentives the multinational and the host country have to engage in an international joint venture. We show why a multinational may agree to enter a joint venture even though this gives rise to spillovers. Surprisingly, we find that a joint venture is sometimes not in the interest of a host country, despite the prospect of spillovers.     

International Market Entry Strategies of Emerging Market MNEs: A Case Study of Qatar Telecom

ABSTRACT

Drawing on existing theoretical perspectives and previous research, this study essentially investigated the strategic motives, location choice, and international entry mode strategies of emerging market multinational enterprises based on a case study of a telecom company, Qatar Telecom (Qtel) from the Gulf Cooperation Council. Using empirical findings from the semi-structured interviews, this study has clearly indicated that the main strategic motivation behind Qtel's internationalization was essentially opportunity seeking in terms of enabling market development and generating higher return on investment. Although Qtel used different entry strategies depending on the characteristics of host country markets, the company is more in favor of mergers and acquisitions than greenfield investments.     

Foreign Direct Investment and Training in the Host Country: The Tariff-Jumping Argument Revisited

We analyze the direct investment versus export decision of a multinational firm in competition with a potential entrant in a host country. We consider a workers' skills asymmetry between the host and the multinational home countries. We also give the multinational the possibility to train all (or a part of) the hired workers when investing. We show that an improvement in the workers' skills in the host country does not systematically increase the multinational incentive to invest. We also demonstrate that the tariff-jumping investment can improve the welfare of the host country even if it excludes the local firm from the market.     

Trade and Market Liberalisation in Eastern Europe

SUMMARY

The question of why multinational companies (MNCs) choose to locate in one region rather than another has been an important topic in IB research for many years, but has recently received even more attention. This paper presents the results of an econometric investigation of the locational determinants of Italian firms in Central and Eastern Europe. Italian firms have been very active investors in the CEE countries. Our results broadly confirm the findings of previous studies, but we also find that both trade liberalisation and market liberalisation are important influences upon the location decision. If the CEE governments wish to attract further (Italian) foreign investment, then further liberalisation of their domestic economies should be a policy priority.     

East—West joint ventures and buyback contracts

Contractual joint ventures (CJVs) and the buyback form of countertrade are popular methods that Socialist countries use to attract foreign investment. In this paper we explore some reasons why this is so and also explain two predominant characteristics of these contracts: the existence of sharing rules and minimum standard requirements on inputs. The model stresses the incentive problems involved when a (Socialist) host country, which does not allow foreign direct investment, uses a CJV to obtain the fruits of some knowledge-based production process from a multinational enterprise.     

A race to lower standards? Labor standards and location choice of outward FDI from the BRIC countries

Scholars argue that multinational corporations tend to locate their investment in countries with lower labor standards, but empirical results are highly inconsistent. In this paper, we investigate the effect of differential labor standards on the location choice of outward greenfield foreign direct investment (FDI) from Brazil, Russia, India and China (i.e. the BRIC countries). We find robust evidence that while there is a tendency toward the attraction of FDI by lower labor standards in developed countries, such a “race” is absent in FDI directed to developing countries. Location choice is highly path dependent upon previous trading relations between the home and the host country, which hampers the MNCs’ ability to arbitrage. Conversely, capital mobility at the industry level is found to intensify the race to lower standards.     

Temporary social dumping,union legalisation and FDI: a note on the strategic use of standards

This paper analyses the welfare implications for a developing country of using union legalisation as a policy instrument to attract inward foreign direct investment. While its presence may discourage a foreign multinational (MNE) from locating in the host country, unionisation is an important rent-extracting instrument for the host country. We show that if the MNE benefits from dynamic effects, the host country government may have an incentive to adopt temporary social dumping: banning the union in the short run to extract higher rents in the future. However, if the government can use a fiscal instrument in conjunction with union legalisation, the former can circumvent the need to engage in social dumping.     

外商直接投资与发展中国家的人力资本发展

人力资本不仅仅影响一国内部经济增长,同时也和外部经济交往比如外商直接投资(FDI)存在互为补充的关系。FDI能够对东道国的人力资本发展起到重要作用,主要通过影响东道国的正规教育和在职培训提升东道国的人力资本水平;发展中国家要加大本国的教育投资;鼓励跨国公司的培训活动和实施吸引人才的制度;实现FDI、人力资本和技术外溢的良性循环。     

Empirical asymmetries in foreign direct investment and taxation

This paper assesses the sensitivity of the operations of multinational corporations (MNCs) to host country taxation. The empirical analysis is based on two different measures of MNC activity by U.S. majority-owned foreign affiliates: panel data for aggregate real gross product in manufacturing that originates in a given host country and micro data for a single year regarding the likelihood of a firm locating in a given host country. The empirical estimates indicate that investment geared toward export markets, rather than the domestic market, is particularly sensitive to host country taxation, that this sensitivity appears to be greater in developing countries than developed countries, and that it is becoming greater over time.     

Cooperative ventures in emerging economies

Foreign market entry strategy involves choices about which markets to enter and how to do it. Most of the literature on foreign direct investment reflects an interest in ownership structure decisions and the risks foreign investing firm may face. As recognized in many studies, one set of risks arises from public expropriation hazards, a function of the ability of the host country's institutional environment to credibly commit to a given policy or regulatory regime. Empirical research has shown this hazard to have an impact on ownership levels. This study is a theoretical model that describes how multinational firms face moral hazard risk from their local partners and political risk from the host country when they decide to go abroad in a joint-venture alliance. I found that the greater the level of hazard expropriation, the lower the participation of the multinational firm in the final cash flow, except for when the multinational firm has the negotiation power and there is a high level of local investment protectionism. In that case, the multinational firm increases its participation in the final cash flow.     

Multinational activity of European firms and heterogeneity

This paper offers an empirical assessment of the multinational activity of European firms. It takes the predictions of models of firm heterogeneity and FDI activity as a reference to explore the characteristics of multinational firms from 30 European countries. We use a data set, based on ORBIS, which links information of parent–affiliate pairs of firms. Our results show that more productive firms have greater multinational activity in terms of both scope, the number of foreign markets where they invest, and scale, the volume of local sales by subsidiaries active in foreign markets. The estimation of gravity equations shows that country characteristics that encourage multinational activity successively induce the entry of less productive parent firms. We confirm this asymmetry for the GDPs of the home and host countries, distance, contiguity and other standard gravity equation variables.     

Limiting Factors of Foreign Direct Investment Undertaken By Polish Enterprises

Limiting factors of foreign direct investment are of great significance for managers, governments, and scholars as they directly influence the profitability of a foreign subsidiary and a parent multinational company. The aim of the paper is to identify FDI limiting factors of host country location choices among Polish enterprises and differences in the perception of the factors depending on the establishment mode choice, i.e. whether it is through greenfield investments or acquisitions. The paper presents results of a field surveyed carried out in 2012–2013 among Polish companies. The research results revealed that regardless of the establishment mode choice, investors from Poland perceived market-related limiting factors as significant. The empirical findings also proved that there were no significant differences in the perception of the importance of FDI limiting factors, between investors who undertook acquisitions and those who decided to make greenfield investments. However, single cases of differences were identified at the level of the policy framework-related factors.     

A knowledge-and-physical-capital model of international trade flows, foreign direct investment, and multinational enterprises

This paper addresses two important issues at the nexus of the literatures on international trade, foreign direct investment (FDI), foreign affiliate sales (FAS), and multinational enterprises (MNEs). First, the introduction of a third internationally-mobile factor (physical capital) to the standard 2 × 2 × 2 “knowledge-capital” model of MNEs with skilled and unskilled labor allows us to resolve fairly readily the puzzle in the modern MNE literature that foreign affiliate sales among two identical economies completely displace their international trade. Intra-industry trade and intra-industry FDI (and FAS) can coexist for national and multinational firms (with identical productivities) in identical countries. Second, the introduction also of a third country to the model suggests a formal N-country theoretical rationale for estimating gravity equations of bilateral FDI flows and FAS, in a manner consistent with estimating gravity equations for bilateral trade flows.     

Determinants of Sales Destinations of U.S. Multinational Firms' Affiliates in Developing Countries

This study examines the determinants of the sales of .U.S. multinational firms' affiliates to alternative destinations, including sales to other affiliate firms in a host country and a source country markets as well as sales to other non-affiliate persons in each market. Sample host countries are drawn from developing economies where U.S. multinational firms had affiliate firms during the period 1983–1998. The results of the study reveal that affiliates of multinational firms manipulate sales to minimize international taxation. This is supported by the finding that foreign corporate income taxes: affect sales between affiliate firms favorably, unlike its impacts on sales of affiliates to non-affiliate persons in both a host country and source country markets. Considering all markets together, economic volatility and political instability have minimal impacts on sales of affiliates to other affiliate firms compared to their impacts on sales to non-affiliate persons. The results also confirm that host countries' economic policy reforms and membership in multinational investment guarantee agencies facilitate sales of affiliates to other affiliate firms.     

To What Extent Can Foreign Direct Investment Help Achieve International Development Goals?

For FDI to help alleviate absolute poverty and stimulate economic growth in developing countries, two conditions have to be met. First, developing countries need to be attractive to foreign investors. Second, the host‐country environment in which foreign investors operate must be conducive to favourable FDI effects with regard to overall investment, economic spillovers and income growth. This paper argues that it is more difficult to benefit from FDI than to attract FDI. The widely perceived concentration of FDI in few developing countries tends to obscure that, in relative terms, various small and poor countries are fairly attractive to FDI. Yet, the mobilisation of domestic resources remains by far, more important than attracting FDI for financing investment and stimulating economic growth. Furthermore, high inward FDI is no guarantee for poverty alleviation and positive growth effects. In particular, the empirical evidence suggests that host‐country conditions typically prevailing in poor countries, including weak institutions and an insufficient endowment of complementary factors of production, constrain the growth‐enhancing and poverty‐alleviating effects of FDI. The crux is that creating an environment in which FDI may deliver social returns will take considerable time exactly where development needs are most pressing.     

FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT,CREDIBLE POLICY: The Role of Risk Sharing

This article constructs a model of international joint ventures with risk sharing as the main motivation. A foreign firm decides whether to undertake full ownership foreign direct investment, or to form a public-private joint venture with the host country government in an economy in transition. In our framework uncertain taxation is the source of risk. It is demonstrated that start-up investment cost sharing by the host country government encourages foreign investment. Joint financing of investment can act as insurance for the multinational firm because cost sharing serves as a means to sustain the credibility of government policy.     

我国对外直接投资的区位选择——基于投资动机的视角

从对外直接投资动机的视角,采用54国2003-2006年的面板数据,在对样本国聚类的基础上考察了我国对外直接投资区位选择的影响因素。发现在控制了东道国治理基础和双边贸易量后,对我国直接投资而言,发达国家的区位优势在于较高的科技水平,而发展中国家则在于丰富的矿产能源禀赋或潜在的国内市场。同时,发达国家的市场对我国直接投资并不具有吸引力,而在对一些资源丰富的发展中国家进行投资时市场因素的作用也不明显。     

Liability of emergingness and EMNEs’ cross-border acquisition completion: A legitimacy perspective

This paper contributes to the literature on emerging multinational enterprises (EMNEs) by revealing how the conditions in their home countries influence their cross-border acquisitions. The study focuses on the liability of emergingness (LOE). It develops an integrative theoretical framework based on neo-institutional theory and the concept of legitimacy to explain the relationship between LOE and EMNEs’ cross-border acquisitions completion and the situational conditions that shape this relationship. The study uses data on 27,648 announced acquisitions conducted by EMNEs from 24 emerging economies in 175 host countries to estimate the relationships. The results reveal that, while two types of LOE (economic and institutional) have negative impacts on cross-border acquisition completion, the negative impacts become less important or disappear when the host country’s unemployment rate is too high, and the host country’s institutional quality is too low. This finding suggests that EMNEs can mitigate the negative effect of the LOE by carefully choosing a good time and a suitable location to enter into these transactions.     

The endogeneity of the exchange rate as a determinant of FDI: A model of entry and multinational firms

This paper argues that when the exchange rate and projected sales in the host country are jointly determined by underlying macroeconomic variables, regressions of FDI flows on both exchange rate levels and volatility are subject to bias. The results demonstrate that a multinational firm's response to exchange rate volatility will differ depending on whether the volatility arises from shocks in the firm's native or host country. It is the first study to depart from the representative-firm framework in an analysis of direct investment behavior with money.