Bank deposits in tax havens potentially hide illegal tax evasion. The October 2016 release of bilateral locational banking statistics permits us to illuminate three open issues in this respect. We find that the intended effect of additional information-exchange-on-request treaties vanishes since about 2010. This also holds for bank deposits from tax havens in non-havens. In contrast, new treaties based on the automatic exchange of information show bite. This suggests that tax evasion changes its disguise: it adapts to established information exchange treaties while tax evaders seem (partly) surprised by, and thus react to, new treaty forms.

2019:
Public Economics Seminar: Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich

2018:
EEA conference: University of Cologne
Invited session IIPF annual congress: University of Tampere
GIGA Seminar in Socio-Economics: German Institute of Global and Area Studies, Hamburg
Economics Colloquium: University of Hannover

2017:
VfS conference (German Economic Association): University of Vienna
5th Shadow Economy conference: University of Warsaw
DIW graduate center workshop
15th INFINITI conference: University of Valencia

2016:
DIW graduate center workshop, Potsdam

live interview on DW English
Handelsblatt (Germany)
Der Standard (Austria)
Neue Zuercher Zeitung (Switzerland)

Both the data and the code for this paper have been made available together with its publication here.

The political economy literature has put forward a multitude of hypotheses regarding the drivers of structural reforms, but few, if any, empirically robust findings have emerged thus far. To make progress, we draw a parallel with model uncertainty in the growth literature and provide a new version of the Bayesian averaging of maximum likelihood estimates (BAMLE) technique tailored to binary logit models. Relying on a new database of major past labor and product market reforms in advanced countries, we test a large set of variables for robust correlation with reform in each area. We find widespread support for the crisis-induces-reform hypothesis. Outside pressure increases the likelihood of reform in certain areas: reforms are more likely when other countries also undertake them and when there is formal pressure to implement them. Other robust correlates are more specific to certain areas — for example, international pressure and political factors are most relevant for product market and job protection reforms, respectively.

2017:
Workshop on Structural Reforms and European Integration: LSE
Summer School Econometrics of Panel Data and Network Analysis: Humboldt University Berlin (Poster)

2015:
IMF jobs and growth Seminar: International Monetary Fund

The data and a readme for this paper has been made available together with its publication here. I’m in the process of publishing R code on the model averaging routine that will allow you to replicate the paper and more.

Ownership of real estate through corporations in offshore tax havens creates opportunities for tax evasion and money laundering and may have undesirable effects in housing markets. In this paper, we study offshore ownership of real estate in the United Kingdom by combining several data sources: administrative data from the land register, a comprehensive transaction database, a propriety database on corporate ownership links, and a handful of offshore data leaks. Our descriptive analysis shows that the market share of offshore corporations has increased over time and varies strongly across market segments: It currently stands at 1.25% in the overall residential market and around 15% for top-end properties. When data leaks allow us to trace ownership through offshore corporations to the beneficial owners, we find that around half have ties to Africa, Asia and the Middle East, but that the largest ‘foreign’ investor is the United Kingdom itself. Turning to causal evidence, we show that changes in tax incentives and ownership transparency induce strong responses in patterns of offshore ownership, suggesting that both taxation and secrecy are important motives for the beneficial owners. Finally, we show that the Brexit referendum was followed by a sharp increase in property sales by offshore owners and a large differential decrease in property prices in local areas with more offshore ownership, conditional on area and property characteristics. This suggests that the reduction in demand from offshore investors triggered by Brexit had a negative causal effect on property prices and, more broadly, that offshore ownership can have significant real effects in housing markets.

2023:
ASSA, AEA Meetings New Orleans

2022:
OMG Transatlantic Tax Talks: Universities of Oxford, Michigan, Georgetown
Public Finance Seminar: University of California, Berkeley
IIPF annual congress: University of Linz
Public Economics Week: University of Munich (LMU)
The Tax Observatory’s Internal Research Seminar: EU tax observatory
Invited Seminar: Norges Handelshoyskole (NHH), (invited by Max Todtenhaupt)
PhD Seminar: University of Munich (LMU) (presented by Daniel Weishaar)

2021:
Invited Seminar: University of Basel (invited by Kurt Schmidheiny)
Invited Seminar: University of Konstanz (invited by Almuth Scholl)
Symposium of Public Economics: University of Osaka
Invited Seminar: University of Halle (invited by Lena Tonzer)

2020:
Invited Seminar: University Eichstaett-Ingolstadt (invited by Dominika Langemayr)
LMU junior faculty retreat: University of Munich, LMU
IIPF annual congress: University of Iceland, Reykjavik (presented by Daniel Weishaar)

2019:
LMU Junior Faculty Retreat: University of Munich, LMU

VoxEU column

This paper studies financial service provision booked through offshore financial centers (OFCs). Based on several novel data sources and recent advances in event study methodology, I exploit the natural experiment of re-occurring hurricanes hitting small islands and compare local reactions to reactions in financial service activity. I find that local conditions, captured by monthly satellite data on nightlight intensity, deteriorate significantly for nine months. However, in OFCs, the international bank sector does not react. Non-OFC islands on the other hand do show strong negative reactions. Similar (non-)reactions are visible in equity prices. Additionally, a link of OFC service provision to activity in London, Tokyo, and New York is visible in leaked data. Finally, a long term relationship between offshore finance and local development is absent, but only on OFCs. These results indicate that international regulation attempts that aim at forcing OCFs to provide information on financial service activity could be targeted better, they show that we mis-allocate financial risk to OFCs, and they cast doubt on offshore finance as a valid development strategy.

2022:
Huntsman School of Business Department Seminar Series: USU

2021:
Invited Speaker: ‘‘The Fiscal and Distributional Consequences of Tax Evasion’’, EU joint research center and EU tax observatory

2020:
Invited Seminar: German Minsitry of Finance
Invited Seminar: University St. Gallen (invited by Christian Keuschnigg)
113th annual NTA conference
Invited Presentation: IFF Network (invited by Niels Johannesen)
IIPF annual congress: University of Iceland, Reykjavik
ASSA Annual Meeting: San Diego
Winter School on Inequality and Social Welfare Theory: Alba di Canazei

2019:
MaTax - Sixth Annual Conference, ZEW Mannheim
job talks

2018:
Econometric Society - European Winter Meeting, Naples
PhD Workshop: Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance, Munich
Centre for Business Taxation Doctoral Meeting: Sa"id Business School, University of Oxford
17th Workshop on Public Finance: WZB, Berlin
Brown Bag Seminar Macroeconomics: Humboldt University Berlin
BERA Workshop on Applied Economics: Hertie School of Governance
VfS conference (German Economic Association): University of Freiburg
CEBI Seminar: University of Copenhagen
Cluster Seminar on Public Finance: DIW Berlin

Handelsblatt (Germany) finanzen.net

Assuming that not everyone cares about small islands as much as I do, Mark Toth and me wrote an R package based on the code of this paper that allows you to build plots and moonthly or yearly time series of nightlight intensity for (almost) any geospatial unit on the planet. Find it on github.

This paper investigates whether the existence of an internal capital market increases resilience of multinational affiliates during economic downturns. Does the international reach of the multinational firm create more flexible access to credit, particularly in times of credit shortage, and does this affect performance throughout a crisis? We combine multiple sources of entity level panel data and compare the borrowing and lending patterns of affiliates of multinational enterprises to the patterns of comparable domestic firms at the onset of a financial crisis. We first document large differences in the financing patterns of multinational affiliates and domestic entities in response to the global financial crisis of 2008. Evidence suggests that multinationals directed credit towards the headquarter in response to this crisis, causing a large drop in credit of foreign affiliates relative to comparable domestic entities. Interestingly, we do not find these patterns when looking at national crises, suggesting that the flexibility of the internal capital market allows multinationals to react differently to global versus national crises.

2022:
Invited Seminar: Norges Handelshoyskole (NHH), (invited by Max Todtenhaupt, presented by Sarah Clifford)
Symposium of Public Economics: University of Osaka

2020:
CES Public Economics Seminar: LMU Munich
CBT Brown Bag: University of Oxford (presented by Sarah Clifford)

2021:
12th Norwegian-German Seminar on Public Sector Economics, University of Munich (LMU)
IIPF annual congress: University of Iceland, Reykjavik (presented by Barbara Stage)\

We evaluate the impact of regulatory attempts by German authorities to combat international tax evasion. Monthly cross-border deposits from tax havens in German banks show a 32-34% reduction in reaction to bilateral information exchange. These findings are comparable in magnitude to a number of reference studies which confirms Germany as a valid case study for international tax evasion. We show disaggregated reactions for a list of tax havens and find large reactions to information exchange for Guernsey, the Bahamas, and Jersey. We then employ a manually constructed narrative databases collecting changes in the German tax code and information leaks from tax havens. Tax evaders do not react to changes in tax rates and leaks show consistent signs but are rarely significant. These results confirm information exchange as the main focus in the analysis of international tax evasion.

2018:
IIPF annual congress: University of Tampere

2017:
16th Workshop on Public Economics: WZB, Berlin

The repressed recovery from the 2008/2009 Financial Crisis has highlighted significant frictions in the US-dollar based international monetary system. Researchers argue that one reason for this predicament is the Eurodollar, i.e. money creation outside national regulation. Yet, empirical evidence on the Eurodollar system is scant as available statistical data does not distinguish between US dollar and the Eurodollar. This paper asks about the role of the Eurodollar in the international monetary order, both in size and in substance. Building on a conceptual analysis of the distinct nature of the two currencies the paper proceeds in three steps: First, we construct a global estimate of the volume of the offshore created Eurodollar and compare it to the onshore created US dollar. This is possible via a combination of national currency breakdowns and bilateral exposures to offshore financial centres available in the BIS banking data. Second, we assess the effect that the existence and size of the Eurodollar system has on US monetary policy. Finally, we discuss what the findings mean for the nature and governance of the contemporary international monetary system.

2019:
ISA annual convention: Toronto