This paper updates a seminal study by Harry Grubert that suggested taxation is an important determinant of the location of U.S. business activity abroad (Grubert and Mutti, 1991). The present analysis yields three key findings. First, effective tax rates (ETRs) continue to influence U.S. Multinational Enterprises' (MNEs') location decisions, although our constant elasticity estimates are smaller than other researchers report. Second, the majority of our estimates demonstrate stability over the sample period, across several measures of business activity, and for two common tax rate specifications. Finally, we address the potential endogeneity of the tax variable, and our instrumental variable estimates are larger than baseline elasticities, especially for current year investment and research and development (R&D).

中文翻译：

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税收和美国海外业务活动的地点

本文更新了哈里·格鲁伯特（Harry Grubert）的一项开创性研究，该研究表明，税收是美国商业活动在海外位置的重要决定因素（Grubert和Mutti，1991）。本分析得出三个主要发现。首先，有效税率（ETR）继续影响美国跨国企业（MNEs）的选址决策，尽管我们的恒定弹性估算值小于其他研究人员的报告。其次，我们的大多数估计值都表明了在样本期内，多项业务活动度量以及两种常见税率规格下的稳定性。最后，我们解决了税收变量的潜在内生性，我们的工具变量估计值大于基线弹性，尤其是对于本年度的投资和研发（R＆D）。