Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/190984 
Year of Publication: 
2018
Series/Report no.: 
arqus Discussion Paper No. 235
Publisher: 
Arbeitskreis Quantitative Steuerlehre (arqus), Berlin
Abstract: 
This study examines whether country-specific risk attenuates the association between tax policies and corporate risk-taking. We define country-specific risk (political and fiscal budget risk) as taxpayer's risk that tax refunds on losses cannot be paid due to the institutional environment or fiscal reasons. We exploit a cross-country panel with 234 changes in corporate tax rates and 49 changes in loss offset rules. We investigate whether government risk-sharing via loss offset rules and tax rates affects risk-taking conditional on country risk. We also examine whether tax rate changes, that scale the risk-sharing effect, influence the propensity to conduct risky projects in different country-level risk environments. Our results suggest that country-level risk fully attenuates the previously documented association between tax policies and corporate risk-taking. It attenuates both the effectiveness of loss offset rules and tax rate changes on corporate risk-taking. While changes in tax policy are attractive to policymakers because alternative instruments to encourage risk-taking cannot as easily be adjusted, we provide significant evidence that country risk considerably limits policymakers' ability to induce firm risk-taking via changes in tax policies.
Subjects: 
corporate risk-taking
country risk
cross-country study
fiscal risk
risky investments
JEL: 
H25
H32
G32
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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