Replication Data for: Spillover Effects in International Law: Evidence from Tax Planning
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Multinational firms frequently route their foreign investments through intermediate shell companies. Increasingly, firms engage in proxy arbitration, using these shell companies to access other states’ bilateral investment treaties and file investor–state disputes against their host states. I argue that proxy arbitration is actually a spillover effect of firms’ efforts to reduce their tax burdens. Firms invest abroad through intermediate shell companies to access the bilateral tax treaty network, reducing their withholding taxes. Because the tax and investment treaty networks overlap extensively, these “tax-planning” firms often gain investment treaty coverage as a side benefit, enabling them to file proxy arbitration in the event of a dispute. Using novel, fine-grained data on the ownership structures of multinational firms, I find evidence in support of the spillover effects theory. The results shed new light on the costs of corporate tax planning, and inform ongoing policy debates about reforming the international investment regime; moreover, they make clear that understanding the true effects of global governance institutions requires attention to how firms strategically change their legal forms to access or avoid them.
跨国企业常通过中间空壳公司开展对外投资。如今，越来越多企业借助这类空壳公司援引他国双边投资条约（bilateral investment treaties），对东道国提起投资者-国家争端仲裁，即代理仲裁（proxy arbitration）。本文认为，代理仲裁实则是企业为减轻税负所做努力的外溢效应。企业通过中间空壳公司开展对外投资，目的是接入双边税收协定网络，以降低预提税税负。由于税收协定与投资条约网络存在广泛重叠，这类“税务筹划（tax-planning）”企业往往可顺带获得投资条约保护，从而在发生争端时能够提起代理仲裁。本文利用涵盖跨国企业所有权结构的新颖细粒度数据，找到了支持外溢效应理论的实证证据。研究结果为企业税务筹划的成本问题提供了全新视角，同时为当前围绕国际投资体制改革展开的政策辩论提供了参考；此外，研究还明确，要理解全球治理机构的真实效应，需关注企业如何战略性调整自身法律组织形式，以接入或规避相关制度规则。
