題 目：CEO Political Affiliation and Firms’ Tax Avoidance
主講人：Xian Sun博士 （美國霍普金斯大學）
時 間：6月19日(周二) 下午2:00-3:30
地 點：主樓326會議室
主講人簡介：
Dr. Sun received her PhD in finance from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2006. She worked for Office of Comptroller of Currency, the supervisor of US national banks, for 3 years after graduation, where she was promoted to the position of senior Financial Economist. Dr. Sun then joined Carey Business School of Johns Hopkins University as the tenure-tracked Assistant Professor in Finance. She has published in prestigious financial journals such as Journal of Financial Quantitative Analysis, Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of International Money and Finance, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Financial Stability, and Comparative Economic Studies. Her research interests include emerging markets, political institutions and financial institutions.
內容簡介：
This paper studies the effects of CEOs’ political preferences on corporate tax avoidance. CEOs’ party affiliations are identified by their political donations during election cycles. Using four measures of tax avoidance from the literature (book-to-tax difference, shelter activities, permanent tax avoidance, and total tax avoidance), we find that firms led by Republican CEOs have significantly higher levels of tax avoidance by all measures, as opposed to firms led by CEOs with no obvious political preferences. These differences are particularly true when the CEO’s equity-based incentives are low, suggesting that risk incentives do not drive our findings. On the other hand, Democratic CEOs are associated with higher book-to-tax difference and more shelter activities, especially when CEOs’ risk incentives are high. These results suggest that Republican CEOs’ tax decisions are driven by political preferences and that Democratic CEOs’ tax decisions are driven by risk incentives. The robustness analysis of the 2003 dividend tax cut suggests that the significantly higher tax avoidance associated with Republican CEOs is not driven by this policy change. Lastly, the fixed-effect of Republican CEOs on tax avoidance is especially significant among well-governed firms.
