Exploiting the staggered adoption of the modified-nexus substance requirement across European IP Box regimes, I trace patenting, investment, and R&D employment within multinational groups. Affiliates in IP Box countries raise domestic patent development by about 3%, alongside higher capital investment and R&D employment. Non-IP Box sister affiliates show a corresponding 8% decline, while MNE-level estimates are insignificant. This pattern is consistent with a within-group reallocation of innovative activity toward IP Box locations rather than net growth.
To combat multinational firms’ tax avoidance, policymakers have taken three approaches: direct anti-avoidance rules, transparency mandates, and tax system changes that align corporate activity with cash tax benefits. The latter approach is little understood but has potentially meaningful economic effects beyond limiting tax avoidance. This study examines such a tax system change: the recent Nexus Approach mandated in the European Union to align tax incentives for innovation with firms’ real activity. I show that innovation output, investment, and the demand for research and development (R&D) personnel increase in countries that offer preferential tax regimes for income from intellectual property (IP Box countries) after the nexus requirement is introduced. The effects are strongest among affiliates that, prior to the reform, engaged more extensively in IP-Box-related income shifting, had lower frictions to expanding domestic R&D, or operated in countries with strong tax benefits and subsidy environments. This growth, however, comes at the expense of non-IP Box countries, as multinationals reallocate innovative activities and investments within their group.
Don’t Fear the Sunlight: Tax Transparency and Multinational Investment in the Global South
with Marcel Olbert · work in progress · 2026
When a developing country joins the Country-by-Country Reporting (CbCR) information-exchange network, its tax authority gains access to multinationals’ global tax positions for the first time. We ask whether this transparency drives investment away, or whether, by making tax enforcement more predictable, it actually attracts it. Across bilateral, country, and firm-level designs, CbCR-scope firms expand their local presence, host tax revenue rises, and governance improves, especially where pre-reform corruption was high.
Do Transfer Pricing Arbitration Clauses Foster Profit Shifting and Foreign Direct Investment?
with Andreas Oestreicher · work in progress · 2025
Using a stacked difference-in-differences design, we study how arbitration clauses in double taxation treaties reshape multinational behavior. The clauses significantly affect profit shifting and raise trade value-added at low-taxed affiliates, yet weaken FDI inflows into those affiliates and increase profit distributions — a tension between paper profits and real investment.
Boie-Wegener, M., A. Oestreicher, R. Koch & L. Schön (2024). “The Fiscal Effects of Tax Rate Cuts and Depreciation Allowances in Times of Crisis.” Steuer und Wirtschaft (StuW), 101(2), 104–123. (published in German)
Practitioner contributions
Bärsch, S.-E., M. Boie-Wegener & M. Olbert (2026). “Key Insights from Empirical Tax Research: A Current Overview and Implications for Corporate Practice.” Der Betrieb, 79(16), 954–962. (published in German)
Boie-Wegener, M., A. Oestreicher, R. Koch, L. Schön & S. Hartmann (2023). “Revenue and Investment Effects of Currently Discussed Corporate Taxation Measures.” ifst-Schrift No. 550. (published in German)
Third-party funding
“Analysis of the Effects of Tax Reform Measures on the Investment Response of Companies Using Micro Simulation Approaches – Framework Conditions for Investment Incentives.” Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, 2021–2022 (with R. Koch, D. Langenmayr, A. Oestreicher, S. Hartmann & L. Schön).
Teaching
I teach corporate taxation and empirical tax research, with an emphasis on institutional knowledge and empirical research skills and an applied, policy-relevant focus.
Bachelor
Company Taxes Iexercise class · 2021–23
Seminar on the Determination of Incomesupervision
Workshop on Academic Writing and Research Methodsinstructor · 2021–23
Bachelor’s thesessupervision
Master
Seminar on Company Taxationsupervision
Seminar on Empirical Tax Researchinstructor · 2025
Workshop on Academic Writing and Research Methodsinstructor
