This paper investigates the impact of the Automatic Exchange of Information (AEoI) on tax compliance using French tax records and foreign financial asset data. It first provides an overview of offshore asset ownership among French households, highlighting a concentration of wealth in foreign accounts among the top earners. The study then evaluates a 2019 intervention by the French tax authority, where taxpayers listed in foreign reports were reminded of their reporting obligations, leading to increased compliance across various income groups, except the top 0.01%. The paper also studies the causal effects of AEoI on tax compliance, exploiting the staggered implementation of AEoI across countries to compare taxpayers in early adopter countries with those in late adopter countries.

We document the increasing role of the offshore trusts in international wealth

management. Looking at investment in British real estate, one of the most popular international investment assets, we document a number of descriptive facts. First, the role of direct investment from domestic trusts has been increasing at lower rates in recent years. Second, the offshore trust is starting to become more important in the market, outperforming domestic trusts. Third, this investment exhibits patterns across prices and geography that are more in line with the investment patterns of tax haven shell companies than those of traditional trusts. The offshore trust is highly opaque and not subject to the transparency initiatives that aim at establishing the ultimate ownership of corporate structures. Our results cast doubt on the favourable tax treatment of trusts and the efficiency of international financial regulation which by and large ignores the offshore trust in its reporting requirements.

We assess Euro Area financial integration correcting for the role of “onshore offshore financial centers” (OOFCs) within the Euro Area. The OOFCs of Luxembourg, Ireland, and the Netherlands serve dual roles as both hubs of investment fund intermediation and centers of securities issuance by foreign firms. We provide new estimates of Euro Area countries’ bilateral portfolio investments which look through both roles, attributing the wealth held via investment funds to the underlying holders and linking securities issuance to the ultimate parent firms. Our new estimates show that the Euro Area is less financially integrated than it appears, both within the currency union and vis-à-vis the rest of the world.

This paper characterizes profit shifting behavior across the distribution of multinational groups and thereby provides three sets of results relevant for the recently introduced Global Minimum Tax (GMT). First, we establish the group-size cutoff at which MNEs change their production function to include the ability to engage in aggressive profit shifting. Second, we show how this cutoff coincides with an increase of internal debt within the group. Third, we show that this is connected with a decrease in effective tax rates of the MNE. Finally, we establish an indicator that correlates with our indicators of internal debt and lending to tax haven subsidiaries to allow researchers without access to detailed internal lending data to identify aggressive profit shifters.

We study the shape of the global wealth distribution, using the Forbes List of Billionaires. We develop simple statistics based on ratios of log moments to test the default assumption of a Pareto distribution, which is strongly rejected. Hazard rates show that the log-transformed data instead follow a Gompertz distribution, which means that the data in levels follow a truncated-Weibull distribution. We further apply our model to the U.S. city size distribution and the U.S. firm size distribution. These distributions also show a rejection of Pareto in favor of (truncated-)Weibull. We discuss some theoretical and practical implications of our results.

This paper examines the choice of how aggregate wealth is measured, and how this affects our understanding of its distribution. Using two alternative data sources on the distribution of individual assets – income tax and survey data – we show that whether one targets a National Accounts measure of aggregate wealth, or survey-based aggregates, changes the share of wealth attributed to the top 1% by 1.4 percentage points in 2016-18. We argue that National Accounts – which have become the de facto data source for measuring aggregate wealth – are poorly aligned conceptually with the measure of personal wealth one would often like to target.

This paper studies intragenerational wealth mobility in Germany and Australia using longitudinal household survey data. Our results of rank-rank-correlations around 0.75 over a short period (4-5 years) indicate an elevated persistence of wealth in both countries. In Germany, the rank-rank correlation declines by ca. 7% (to 0.70) when extending the time horizon to 15 years, but there is no decline in the persistence of net wealth for individuals with positive initial wealth. In contrast, we observe a 20-25% decrease (to 0.55-0.60) in the persistence in net wealth in Australia, when the time span under consideration increases from 4 to 16/20 years. Investigating the reasons behind wealth rank changes using OLS regression reveals that income, education, inheritances, savings and portfolio composition are relevant factors for intragenerational wealth mobility.

This study revisits the trends and drivers of wealth inequality and accumulation in the Western world since the onset of industrialization. The empirical analysis reveals that aggregate wealth–income ratios were substantially lower before World War I than previously suggested. It also shows that wealth concentration decreased over the past century, remaining historically low in Europe, while it has increased in the United States. These patterns are primarily driven by the accumulation of housing and pension savings among middle-class households, rather than by reductions in the wealth of the affluent. The findings challenge the notion that unregulated capitalism inevitably leads to extreme wealth accumulation and question the idea that sustained wealth equalization necessitates capital shocks from wars or progressive taxation. Instead, they highlight the importance of institutions that enable ordinary people to build personal wealth in understanding the long-term development of wealth in Western societies.

Many Western economies have seen a fall in the employment share of the traditionally male-dominated, manufacturing sector, while demand is increasing in female-dominated jobs. Still, men appear reluctant to enter these occupations. To understand persistent labor market segregation, I exploit within-school-across-cohort variation in the gender composition of the occupations of schoolmates' parents, and document that gender segregation is transmitted from one generation to the next. Boys who were exposed to gender-stereotypical male role models enter male-dominated occupations, while those socialized in cohorts with peers whose fathers worked alongside women enter occupations with more women. This effect goes beyond the influence of their father. In general, mothers' labor market behavior has negligible effects on boys. In contrast, girls are mainly influenced by female role models, and compared to boys the effects are much smaller. However, when a larger share of mothers work full-time, gender segregation decreases in the next generation.

One potential factor that contributes to the gender earnings gap is the joint taxation of spouses. However, quantifying the impact of joint taxation on earnings has been challenging due to the lack of exogenous variation and the simultaneous influence of traditional gender norms. To address these challenges, we exploit the introduction of joint taxation for same-sex couples in Germany in 2013. This allows us to analyze the entire population of same-sex couples who file taxes jointly using newly linked administrative income tax return data. To determine the effects of joint taxation, we employ a difference-in-differences approach using different-sex couples as the control group. Our findings reveal that same-sex secondary earners experience a significant decrease in earnings after filing taxes jointly, leading to a substantial widening of the partner pay gap. Primary earners also reduce their earnings, although not as substantial, suggesting that the income effect is stronger than the substitution effect for them.

The taxation of couples is a recurring theme in academic debate. In this paper, we explore whether political economy arguments can explain the persistence of joint taxation in Germany. We contrast two different methodologies to answer this question. First, we estimate recently developed sufficient statistics to determine the share of winners and losers from a reform towards individual taxation based on observed behavior, i.e., revealed preferences. Second, we ran a large scale survey experiment to elicit stated preferences and attitudes regarding the taxation of couples among a representative sample of the German population. Both methods consistently show that the tax treatment of couples in Germany is highly controversial. Relying on revealed preferences, the support for a reform towards individual taxation barely passes the majority threshold. According to stated preferences, support for such an elimination of income splitting is even lower, but varies strongly across household types and political party preferences.

Despite female advances in the labor market, it remains a quasi-universal norm that men spend more time on paid work, while women spend more time on housework and child-care. In this paper, we study the importance of the male breadwinner norm by recurring to a large administrative dataset for Germany. Specifically, we analyze whether a discontinuity at the point of equal incomes exists which is interpreted as couples’ avoidance of violating the male breadwinner norm. We stratify the sample in several ways to gain insights into the channels driving the discontinuity. Furthermore, we focus on the role of tax incentives’ on the intra-couple income distribution.

Various nations combat transportation-related environmental effects through fuel efficiency standards and subsidies for hybrid/electric vehicles. Similarly, energy ratings aid consumers in making informed choices for large appliances. Extending this idea to automobiles, a labeling system could inform buyers about environmental impacts, potentially influencing demand akin to environmental subsidies. Israel's 2009 reform, assigning automobiles a "green score" dictating differential taxes and mandated reporting, prompted consumers to favor less environmentally damaging vehicles. About 75% of the shift resulted from price reductions, with information provision accounting for the remaining 25%. Notably, subsidies were less likely to impact models favored by lower socioeconomic groups, indicating the reform's regressive nature.

To show whether tax avoidance makes large firms even larger, we exploit the impact of the country-by-country reporting reform on multinationals in a difference-in-differences approach. We find that increased tax compliance following the reform reduces the size of large multinationals. Specifically, a one percentage point rise in effective tax rates results in a 2.3% decrease in sales. We also show a sales decline in subsidiaries owned by multinationals subject to the reform compared to those exempt; and a decrease in concentration in industries where the top firms are subject to the reform. These findings highlight the potential of tax compliance reforms in fostering competition.

This paper investigates the response and welfare implication of firms to a size-dependent enforcement policy using Expend Paper Review (EPR) in Taiwan. With the policy threshold at 30 million New Taiwan Dollars (NTD), firms are incentivized to lower reported revenue via under-reporting (evasion), revenue-shifting (avoidance), or production reduction. Leveraging a novel combination of detailed tax returns and census survey data, our empirical focus examines how firms strategically bunch below the threshold, displaying diverse behavioral responses shaped by transaction tractability. Downstream industries mainly under-report B2C transactions, decreasing reported revenue by 0.56 million NTD. Conversely, upstream sectors reported lower revenue by 1.1 million NTD. Of this, 50\% was due to production reduction, highlighting misallocation sources and associated efficiency loss. Another 40\% is primarily contributed to B2B revenue-shifting among affiliated firms within ownership networks. Structural welfare estimation further implies that size-based tax enforcement has a broader impact on real economic efficiency beyond revenue considerations.

We use administrative tax data from 10 different developed and developing countries to calculate the within-country corporate elasticity of taxable income and investigate differences between these estimates. Our estimates exploit the differential tax treatment of business income for firms earning positive and negative taxable income in a bunching framework. We develop two new estimators to overcome several challenges that are unique to the business context. We find meaningful differences in the elasticity, with Greece having the largest (1.2) and Guatemala having the smallest (0.09). The differences we find, however, are much smaller than the range found in the literature (0 to 5). This suggests that some of the difference in the estimates in the literature may be due to differences in method rather than fundamental firm-specific characteristics, e.g., industry or tax system-specific characteristics, e.g., level of credits and enforcement.

This paper estimates the elasticity of taxable income to the corporate income tax (CIT) using a 20-years panel of tax administrative data on French companies. I leverage the implementation of a kink at 38.120AC in the CIT in 2001, under which the tax rate is reduced from 33.3% to 15%. I find large and dynamic bunching at the kink, up to 17% of the normal number of firms in 2012. This allows me to compute the elasticity of taxable income to the CIT rate, which ranges from -0.05 the first year of the reform to -0.23 ten years after. From 2013 onward, the bunching mass decreases which coincides with the introduction of a new payroll tax credit. Firms in the bunching mass come from below the kink and for some of them, far from it: more than 6.5 times below the kink, suggesting that they have very heterogeneous elasticities.

We assess firms' taxable income response to a dividend tax credit increase when corporate and personal taxes are integrated. First, we theoretically show that, in an integrated tax system, welfare changes stemming from a rise in corporate taxes depend on two parameters: the elasticity of taxable income with respect to the corporate tax rate and with respect to the dividend tax credit. Second, to estimate both parameters, we propose an identification strategy that relies on the bunching methodology and the excess bunching difference before and after a tax reform that increased the dividend tax credit. Using Canadian administrative tax data and the presence of a kink in the corporate tax system, we estimate these elasticities and empirically show that the increase in the dividend tax credit reduced the deadweight loss associated with an increase in the corporate tax by more than 50%.

We explore factors that contributed to a recent increase in macro-based profit shifting analyses, summarize the methods, and provide a meta-analysis of recent revenue loss estimates. We find a consensus estimate for tax revenue losses in the US of around 0.3 percent of GDP in 2022, which amounts to around 18 percent of total CIT collections. The meta-analysis reveals that double counting of income increases estimated revenue losses as does the use of statutory tax rates. The identification approach does not help explain variation in estimates. An important advantage of macro-data is its wider country coverage, enabling estimation of global revenue losses. A simple average of existing studies suggests that these amount to around 0.34 % of GDP or 12 percent of global CIT collections. The revenue potential from more effective measures to combat tax evasion, in the order of USD 200 billion annually, is significant and potentially larger than expected.

We use transaction-level card expenditures to estimate the effect of Germany’s temporary value-added tax (VAT) in 2020. We use card expenditures in Austria as control because no analogous VAT cut was implemented in Austria and spending of Austrian households provides a stable benchmark to compare spending of German households against. As predicted by consumption theory, we find the VAT cut in-creased consumption growth more for durable goods, with a stronger effect close to the end of the cut. The annualized growth rate of expenditures for durables increased by 7.5 percentage points (pp), with a particularly strong increase of up to 23.6 pp for consumer electronics. The consumption growth rate for semi-durables increased by 5.6 pp, and for non-durables by 2.6 pp. The implied effect on durable spend-ing is four times smaller compared to survey-based estimates in Bachmann et al. (2023), and a fiscal shortfall that is 23 bn larger.

Changes to loss offset rules are often used as a fiscal stimulus measure in times of crisis to alleviate firms’ constraints and support the economy. The effect of these measures has been assessed in the literature using large listed firms, but there is no evidence on the effect of these policies on small private firms. I study a temporary change in the loss carry-back period implemented in the Netherlands over 2009-2011 using administrative and tax return data on small private corporations. Using a difference-indifference set up and matching techniques, I show that an additional year of carry-back has a significant effect on treated firms’ investments, but no significant effect on firms’ survival, employment and profits. The effect on investments is not driven by equity injections but rather by debt increases. Crucially, the significance of the effect on investments is conditional on the

size of the additional carry-back.

Using quarterly data on UK government spending forecasts alongside the household surveys dating back to 1977, we provide new evidence on heterogeneous effects of government spending policies on household consumption. Specifically, while at an aggregate level the on-impact consumption multiplier is about 0.5 and the effect fades only gradually, the consumption effects of spending shocks are substantially greater for (1) households with mortgage debt and (2) households in the left tail of the income distribution. As is well known, mortgagors, unlike outright homeowners, tend to have large illiquid assets, but little liquid wealth. Our results thus suggest that household balance sheets, together with their income levels, play a key role in the transmission of government spending policies in the UK.