This study examines whether corporate headquarters (CHQ) location influences firms’ tax avoidance practice. Our two-stage OLS regression analysis demonstrates that firms engage in less (more) tax avoidance when their CHQ are located near (farther away from) urban areas. Using recursive path analysis, we further examine the channels through which CHQ location impacts tax avoidance practice and find that the overall negative effect comprises a larger direct negative effect of CHQ location and a smaller indirect negative effect of CHQ location through financial reporting opacity and number of analysts following on firms’ tax avoidance. Furthermore, our nonrecursive path analysis shows that while CHQ location affects tax avoidance through direct and indirect channels, tax avoidance does not affect the choice of CHQ location. Finally, we find that when firms switch their CHQ from urban areas to rural areas (vice versa), their tax avoidance increases (decreases) accordingly. Our study thus provides a useful extension of tax avoidance studies and the literature on CHQ location’s effect on firms’ strategic decisions and performance.

We examine the relation between state residual ownership and bank risk-taking for privatized banks from 45 countries. Applying propensity score matching, we find that privatized banks tend to exhibit higher levels of risk-taking post-privatization than their publicly listed non-privatized counterparts. Moreover, partially privatized banks exhibit higher levels of risk-taking than fully privatized banks. We also observe a positive and significant relation between the level of residual state ownership and risk-taking. These findings are consistent with the distorted objectives associated with government control, as suggested by the political benefits of control, and with the soft budget constraint views of state ownership. The distortion can be mitigated by the quality of a country's institutional and regulatory environments. Finally, our results show that the effect of state ownership on risk-taking is more pronounced in countries with a higher dominance of state-owned enterprises, and it was more prevalent during the global financial crisis.