Decline of Controlled Foreign Company Rules and Rise of Intellectual Property Boxes: How the European Court of Justice Affects Tax Competition and Economic Distortions in Europe

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has become an influential player in the field of direct taxation in the European Union (EU) in the past 20 years. However, it is unclear whether or not the ECJ's decisions and the corresponding reactions by the member states actually contribute to tax neutrality in economic terms and, therefore, to the achievement of the internal market. In 2006, the ECJ limited the applicability of specific tax rules in the EU that are intended to prohibit the excessive use of low‐tax countries by multinationals. Our counterfactual analysis shows that the court's restriction of so‐called controlled foreign company rules and the related second‐round reactions by some member states – i.e. the introduction of low‐tax regimes for income from acquired intellectual properties (IP boxes for acquired IP) – cast doubt on the seemingly positive effects the ECJ has on reducing tax distortions. In addition, we demonstrate that the restricted applicability of IP boxes as endorsed by the OECD and the European Commission would strengthen tax neutrality in Europe.     

The Effect of Regulatory Harmonization on Cross‐Border Labor Migration: Evidence from the Accounting Profession

The paper examines whether international regulatory harmonization increases cross‐border labor migration. To study this question, we analyze European Union initiatives that harmonized accounting and auditing standards. Regulatory harmonization should reduce economic mobility barriers, essentially making it easier for accounting professionals to move across countries. Our research design compares the cross‐border migration of accounting professionals relative to tightly matched other professionals before and after regulatory harmonization. We find that international labor migration in the accounting profession increases significantly relative to other professions. We provide evidence that this effect is due to harmonization, rather than increases in the demand for accounting services during the implementation of the rule changes. The findings illustrate that diversity in rules constitutes an economic barrier to cross‐border labor mobility and, more specifically, that accounting harmonization can have a meaningful effect on cross‐border migration.     

Corruption Via Media Capture: The Effect of Competition

In this article, we compare a government's optimal choice of whether to engage in corruption by capturing the media outlets through bribery in two alternative media market structures: monopoly versus duopoly. While there is an extra bribe claimant in a media duopoly relative to monopoly, it may also be harder for each firm to individually expose corruption when the rival co‐opts with the government. We find that when the latter effect is stronger than the former, media is captured at lower bribes under duopoly relative to monopoly and in such instances media competition facilitates rather than hindering corruption.     

Determinants of Mortgage Default and Consumer Credit Use: The Effects of Foreclosure Laws and Foreclosure Delays

The mortgage default decision is part of a complex household credit management problem. We examine how factors affecting mortgage default spill over to other credit markets. As home equity turns negative, homeowners default on mortgages and home equity lines of credit at higher rates, whereas they prioritize repaying credit cards and auto loans. Larger unused credit card limits intensify the preservation of credit cards over housing debt. Although mortgage nonrecourse statutes increase default on all types of housing debt, they reduce credit card defaults. Foreclosure delays increase default rates for housing and nonhousing debts. Our analysis highlights the interconnectedness of debt repayment decisions.     

National levels of corruption and foreign direct investment

We model the relationship between bilateral foreign direct investment (FDI) and the level of corruption in multinational firms’ (MCNs’) home and host countries. We construct and test a model of bilateral FDI between countries that differ in their levels of corruption. FDI is affected negatively both by the level of corruption in the host country and by differences in home- and host-country corruption. Our model emphasizes that MNCs develop skills for dealing with home-country corruption, and these skills become a competitive advantage in similarly corrupt host countries. We test the model using data on bilateral FDI stocks among a large number of home and host countries, using a variety of specifications and estimation strategies to provide robustness. Our results show that the effects of host-country corruption and of differences in corruption levels between home and host countries are statistically and economically significant.     

The Efficacy of Regulation Fair Disclosure

This paper examines the impact of Securities and Exchange Commission's Regulation Fair Disclosure (FD) on information leakage around voluntary management disclosures. We find a positive correlation between stock returns two days before and after the voluntary disclosure in the pre‐Regulation FD period, but not in the post‐Regulation FD period. After Regulation FD is implemented, pre‐announcement abnormal return as a percentage of total return decreases by 26.1% (21.4%) for large firms with good (bad) news, suggesting that the amount of information leakage reduces for these firms. These findings provide support for the premise and the intended purpose of the regulation for large firms.     

Hedge Fund Regulation and Misreported Returns

This paper introduces a cross‐country law and finance analysis of the misreporting behaviour in the hedge fund industry in terms of smoothing returns so that a fund consistently generates positive returns. We find strong evidence that international differences in hedge fund regulation are significantly associated with the propensity of fund managers to misreport monthly returns. We find a positive association between wrappers and misreporting, particularly for funds that do not have a lockup provision. Also, we find some evidence that misreporting is less common among funds in jurisdictions with minimum capitalisation requirements and restrictions on the location of key service providers. We assess the robustness of our finds to a number of specifications, including, different specifications of misreporting bin widths, subsets of the data by fund type, as well as specifications controlling for collinearity and selection effects and other robustness checks. We show misreporting significantly affects capital allocation, and calculate the wealth transfer effects of misreporting and relate this wealth transfer to differences in hedge fund regulation.     

Risk Shifting through Nonfinancial Contracts: Effects on Loan Spreads and Capital Structure of Project Finance Deals

We study capital structure negotiation and cost of debt financing between sponsors and lenders using a sample of more than 1,000 project finance loans worth around US$195 billion closed between 1998 and 2003. We find that lenders: (i) rely on the network of nonfinancial contracts as a mechanism to control agency costs and project risks, (ii) are reluctant to price credit more cheaply if sponsors are involved as project counterparties in the relevant contracts, and finally (iii) do not appreciate sponsor involvement as a contractual counterparty of the special purpose vehicle when determining the level of leverage.     

What determines the composition of banks’ loan portfolios? Evidence from transition countries

This paper explores how bank characteristics and the institutional environment influence the composition of banks’ loan portfolios. We use a new and unique data set based on the EBRD Banking Environment and Performance Survey (BEPS), which was conducted for 220 banks in 20 transition countries. We show that bank ownership, bank size, and legal creditor protection are important determinants of the composition of banks’ loan portfolios. In particular, we find that foreign banks play an active role in mortgage lending. Moreover, banks that perceive pledge and mortgage laws to be of high quality choose to focus more on mortgage lending.     

When are outside directors effective?

This paper uses recent regulations that have required some companies to increase the number of outside directors on their boards to generate estimates of the effect of board independence on performance that are largely free from endogeneity problems. Our main finding is that the effectiveness of outside directors depends on the cost of acquiring information about the firm: when the cost of acquiring information is low, performance increases when outsiders are added to the board, and when the cost of information is high, performance worsens when outsiders are added to the board. The estimates provide some of the cleanest estimates to date that board independence matters, and the finding that board effectiveness depends on information cost supports a nascent theoretical literature emphasizing information asymmetry. We also find that firms compose their boards as if they understand that outsider effectiveness varies with information costs.