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There is a growing concern that governments lose substantial corporate tax revenue because of profit shifting through transfer-pricing and thin-capitalization strategies. Existing literature studies profit shifting and transfer pricing separately. In practice, the choice of debt-to-asset ratios in affiliates and the transfer price of debt are interrelated management decisions that are also mutually affected by government regulation. This paper models these strategies as intertwined. We find that the tax sensitivity of the corporate tax base depends on whether the debt shifting and transfer pricing are cost complements or substitutes. A second result is that stricter regulation of debt shifting (transfer pricing) can potentially increase the use of transfer pricing (debt shifting) and thus the amount of profits shifted.

We analyze whether a redistributive government should provide ex ante insurance against unfortunate outcomes or whether it should instead rely on transfers for redistributing income ex post. To this end, we develop a model of education in which individuals face educational risk and wage dispersion across two types of skills. Successful graduation and working as a skilled worker depends on individual effort in education and on public resources, but educational risk still causes (income) inequality. We show that in a second-best setting, in which learning effort is not observable, improving the quality of education by public funding of the educational sector has a significant effect and that this increases efficiency in comparison to a pure (linear) income tax with income transfers from skilled to unskilled workers. Compared to a first-best solution, providing ex ante insurance significantly gains importance relative to traditional ex post redistribution, because it simultaneously alleviates moral hazard in education. These results are strengthened when a (distortionary) skill-specific tax can be implemented.

To analyze the optimal social insurance package, we set up a two-period life-cycle model with risky human capital investment in which the government has access to labor taxation, education subsidies and capital taxation. Social insurance is provided by redistributive labor taxation. Moreover, both education subsidies and capital taxation are used as catalysts to facilitate social insurance by mitigating distortions from labor taxation. We derive a Ramsey-rule for the optimal combination of these two instruments. Relative to capital taxation, optimal education subsidies increase with their relative effectiveness to boost labor supply and with households' underinvestment into education, but they decrease with their relative net distortions. For the optimal absolute levels, indirect complementarity effects (i.e., influencing the effectiveness of the other instrument) do matter. Generally, a decrease in capital taxes should be accompanied by an increase in education subsidies.

This paper presents a theory model that simultaneously accounts for the financing decisions and ownership structure in affiliates of multinational firms. We find that affiliates of multinationals have higher internal and overall debt ratios and lower rental rates of physical capital than comparable domestic firms. We also show that affiliates with minority owners have less debt than wholly owned affiliates and a less tax-efficient financing structure. The latter is due to an externality whereby minority ownership dampens the incentive to avoid taxes through the use of internal debt.

In this model of education, where individuals are exposed both to educational risk and to wage risk within the skilled sector, successful graduation depends both on individual effort to study and on public resources. We show that insuring the present risks is a dichotomic task: Wage risk is diversified ex post among the skilled by graduate taxation and skill-specific tuition fees. Educational risk of failure and inequality between skilled and unskilled workers are mitigated ex ante by enhancing the quality of education. The necessary expenditures are optimally financed by regressive tuition fees and the net revenue from the graduate tax.

We show in a two-period world with endogenous savings and two assets, one of them exhibiting a stochastic return, that an interest-adjusted income tax is optimal. This tax leaves a riskless component of interest income tax free and taxes the excess return with a special tax rate. There is no trade-off between risk allocation and efficiency in intertemporal consumption. Both goals are reached. As the resulting tax system divides income into three parts, the tax can also be called a Triple Income Tax. This distinction and a special tax rate on the excess return are necessary in order to have an optimal risk-shifting effect.

We show in a two-period world with endogenous savings and two assets, one of them exhibiting a stochastic return that an interest adjusted income tax is optimal. This tax leaves a safe component of interest income tax free and taxes the excess return with a special tax rate. There is no trade off between risk allocation and efficiency in intertemporal consumption. Both goals are reached. As the resulting tax system divides income into three parts, the tax can also be called a triple income tax. This distinction and a special tax rate on the excess return is necessary in order to have an optimal risk shifting effect.