Arbeitspapier

There's no place like home: the profitability gap between headquarters and their foreign subsidiaries

Using a large data set of European firms, this paper provides evidence that operations at multinational headquarters are significantly more profitable than operations at their foreign subsidiaries. The effect turns out to be robust and quantitatively large. Our findings suggest that the profitability gap is partly driven by agency costs which arise if value–driving functions are managed by a subsidiary that is geographically separated from the headquarters management. In line with falling communication and travel costs over the last decade, the profitability gap is shown to decline over time. Apart from that, our results indicate that a higher competitiveness of multinational firms in their home markets also contributes to the profitability gap. We discuss various implications of our findings.

Sprache
Englisch

Erschienen in
Series: CESifo Working Paper ; No. 2866

Klassifikation
Wirtschaft
Multinational Firms; International Business
Business Taxes and Subsidies including sales and value-added (VAT)
Firm Performance: Size, Diversification, and Scope
Thema
profit distribution
multinational enterprise
corporate taxes
Multinationales Unternehmen
Direktinvestition
Konzern
Tochtergesellschaft
Auslandsniederlassung
Rentabilität
Europa

Ereignis
Geistige Schöpfung
(wer)
Dischinger, Matthias
Riedel, Nadine
Ereignis
Veröffentlichung
(wer)
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo)
(wo)
Munich
(wann)
2009

Handle
Letzte Aktualisierung
10.03.2025, 11:41 MEZ

Datenpartner

Dieses Objekt wird bereitgestellt von:
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. Bei Fragen zum Objekt wenden Sie sich bitte an den Datenpartner.

Objekttyp

  • Arbeitspapier

Beteiligte

  • Dischinger, Matthias
  • Riedel, Nadine
  • Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo)

Entstanden

  • 2009

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