Search results

Introduction -- Situating Singur -- Land, identity, and the politics of representation -- Law, judicialisation and the politics of waiting -- Class, caste and community -- Gendered mobilisation: women as activists and symbols -- Activist leadership -- Ma, Mati, Manush : Mamata -- Conclusion

Against a background of rather mixed evidence about transfer pricing practices in multinational enterprises (MNEs) and varying attitudes on the part of tax authorities, this paper explores how multiple aims in transfer pricing can be pursued across four different transfer pricing regimes. A MNE has a production subsidiary in one country, from where it sells the produced good locally as well as to a sales subsidiary in a second country. The latter subsidiary is engaged in duopolistic competition with a local competitor. The MNE has two aims in setting the transfer price: strategic delegation and tax minimization. We examine the extent to which the four transfer pricing regimes we set up allow the MNE to pursue these aims. While neither strategic delegation nor tax minimization will be eliminated, trade-offs are inevitable, albeit to varying degree.

We demonstrate that the choice of the transfer price and its effect on intra-firm trade and investment depends on the probability of detection and thus on the measure, on which tax authorities base their audit. A policy implication of the paper is that it should be preferable to condition audits on the amount of income shifted rather than on the distortion of the transfer price proper. Another policy finding is that improving the quality of tax law might be superior to higher detection effort. The former reduces profit shifting and concealment effort, whereas the latter leads to more wasteful use of resources on concealment and has an ambiguous effect on profits shifted.

Nikita Sud. 2021. The Making of Land and the Making of India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. xxiv+253 pp., ₹1,495. ISBN 9780190130206 (hardcover).

Patrik Oskarsson. 2018. Landlock: Paralysing Dispute over Minerals on Adivasi Land in India. Acton: ANU Press. Xiii + 225 pp., ISBN 9781760462512 (online). Available open access at: http://www.oapen.org/search?identifier=1001784