Using global data on syndicated loans, we show that any negative effect of stronger creditor rights on loan spreads, as identified in the prior literature (Qian and Strahan, 2007; Bae and Goyal, 2009), disappears once we include a single country characteristic: country size. This finding is robust to several identification methods, both global samples and within-country changes in creditor rights, different panel spans, and hundreds of control variables. We identify that key origins of the effect of country size on loan pricing are ethnic fractionalization and within-country heterogeneity in economic preferences, which create country risk.

We provide estimates of profit shifting for over 2 million firm-year observations in 100 countries over the period 2009–2020. Employing nonparametric estimation techniques within a mainstay model of profit shifting, we examine how the profits of both parent and subsidiary firms within a multinational group respond to marginal changes in the composite tax indicator. The key advantage of this approach is that it yields firm-year estimates of profit shifting. Multinational firms engage in extensive profit shifting by maintaining affiliates in low-tax countries and zero-tax havens. Multinational groups with an ultimate tax-haven owner exhibit the largest profit response to tax incentives. Our new database opens important avenues for analyzing the sources and effects of profit shifting.

Corporate taxation can have redistributive effects on income and wealth. We hypothesize and empirically establish such an effect working via bank credit. We use a unique sample of small majority-owned firms that apply for credit, where only some firms (treated) experience a corporate tax cut. We show that after the decrease in corporate tax rates, the treated poorer business owners get easier access to credit. However, this policy also considerably increases loan amounts and decreases loan spreads for the treated richer. Ultimately, reducing the corporate tax rate predominantly increases the future income and wealth of richer business owners.