NBER Working Papers by Lindsay Oldenski

Bilateral tax treaties (BTT) are intended to promote foreign direct investment and foreign affiliate activity through double taxation relief. However, BTTs also typically contain provisions that facilitate sharing of tax information between countries intended to curtail tax avoidance by multinational firms. These provisions should disproportionately affect firms that intensively use inputs for which an arms-length price is easily observed, since strategic transfer practices that manipulate tax liabilities are no longer effective with information sharing between countries. Using BEA firm-level data we are able to separately estimate the impacts of double-taxation relief and sharing of tax information on investment behavior of US multinational firms. We find a significant positive effect of...

What determines the boundary of multinational firms? According to Williamson (1975), a potential rationale for vertical integration is to facilitate adaptation in a world where uncertainty is resolved over time. This paper offers the first empirical analysis of the impact of adaptation on the boundary of multinational firms. To do so, we first develop a ranking of sectors in terms of their "routineness" by merging two sets of data: (i) ratings of occupations by their intensities in "problem solving" from the U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Information Network; and (ii) U.S. employment shares of occupations by sectors from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment Statistics. Using U.S. Census trade data, we then demonstrate that, in line with adaptation theories of the...