Valeria Merlo es Profesora en University of Tübingen e Investigadora Afiliada en CESifo. Tiene un PhD en Economía por University of Munich y es Licenciada en Economía por la Universidad de Buenos Aires. Es cofundadora de la  Research School of International Taxation (University of Tübingen) y fue becaria postdoctoral en ETH Zurich.  Sus investigaciones se centran en temas de economía internacional, tributación internacional, comportamiento de empresas multinacionales y econometría aplicada. Sus trabajos han sido publicados en revistas académicas como Economic Policy, Journal of International Economics, Journal of the European Economic Association, Review of International Economics, Economic Inquiry, The World Economy, The Economic Journal, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, European Economic Review, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy y Journal of Public Economics, entre otras.

Abstract: Theoretical literature suggests several channels through which taxes can affect firm productivity. Nevertheless, empirical evidence is scarce and inconclusive. We investigate the relationship between corporate taxation and firm productivity along the whole productivity distribution. We estimate total factor productivity (TFP) for over 4 million firms worldwide and use an unconditional quantile regression approach to assess the effect of corporate taxes along the distribution of TFP. Our findings suggest that taxation has opposite effects across the TFP distribution. This finding is in line with the aforementioned channels which we model in a simple theoretical framework. A higher tax rate drives the least productive firms out of the market, leading to an increase in productivity at the lower end of the distribution. High productivity firms are negatively affected by high corporate income tax rates, as they deter investment in productivity-enhancing process innovation. Furthermore, higher taxes reduce the probability of a firm moving up the productivity distribution over time.

Autores: Svea Holtmann (University of Mannheim), Dominika Langenmayr, (KU Eichstätt-Ingolstadt), Valeria Merlo (University of Tübingen & CESifo) & Georg Wamser (University of Tübingen)

Organizan: Departamento de Economía, Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas y Revista Económica

Contacto: iie@econo.unlp.edu.ar