Offshore FDI, tax havens, and productivity: A network analysis

Research summary

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) use tax havens to benefit from international tax arbitrage and increase their capital efficiency. These activities are purported to distort global financial markets, erode national corporate tax bases, and are singularly targeted in the media. Despite this, MNEs continue to increase the dispersion of their tax haven activities by investing in multiple tax havens. We study how this dispersion affects home and host country productivity. We model the inward and outward offshore foreign direct investment (FDI) networks using longitudinal data on 212 countries. We find that increasing dispersion leads to productivity losses at home but productivity gains in the host country. Further, increasing the prominence of home and host countries in the offshore network, by connecting with central, well-developed tax havens, improves their productivity.

Managerial summary

Is offshore FDI routed through tax havens always unproductive to the MNEs' home and host countries? While governments attempt to contain such investments, MNE managers disperse them into multiple tax havens and continue benefitting from tax arbitrage. We show that all offshore FDI is not unproductive. As managers route their investments through multiple tax havens, their home countries may experience productivity losses, but the host countries receive productivity gains. Further, using central, well-established tax havens bring productivity gains to both home and host countries. We thus show that MNEs' home countries need to reassess their offshore FDI policies since several of them also host these investments. Our paper extends a multilateral perspective on offshore FDI and possible benefits attainable, particularly from central tax havens.