Tax havens and emerging market multinationals: The role of property rights protection and economic freedom

Abstract

This paper presents an investigation of the relationship between home country institutional quality and EMNE investments in tax havens. We develop a conceptual framework that adapts the institutional escapism framework, whereby EMNEs expand globally to escape any home country institutional hazards, together with the institutional leverage framework, whereby EMNEs can leverage their home country institutions as a competitive advantage. This enabled us to conceptually derive and explain the curvilinear (U-shaped) relationship that develops between institutional differences and reforms over time and how this affects EMNE strategy towards tax havens. Based on a large cross-country firm-level dataset, our empirical results confirm the curvilinear relationship, such that EMNEs from weaker institutional environments are more likely to own tax haven subsidiaries. However, as emerging countries improve their institutional environment, the likelihood of investing in tax havens declines before increasing again at a time when said emerging countries have achieved developmental stages similar to those of developed countries. Based on our results, we draw several managerial and policy related implications.