Redrawing the Map of Global Capital Flows: The Role of Cross-Border Financing and Tax Havens — Matteo Maggiori

Sprecher

Matteo Maggiori (Stanford University)

Abstract

Global firms finance themselves through foreign subsidiaries, often shell companies in tax havens, which obscures their nationality in aggregate statistics. We associate the universe of traded securities with their issuer’s ultimate parent and restate bilateral investment positions to better reflect the true financial linkages connecting countries around the world. We find that private capital flows from developed countries to firms in large emerging markets are dramatically larger than previously thought. The national accounts of the United States, for example, understate the U.S. position in Chinese firms by nearly $600 billion, while China’s official net creditor position to the rest of the world may be overstated by as much as 50 percent. We additionally show how taking account of offshore issuance is important for our understanding of the currency composition of external liabilities, the nature of foreign direct investment, and the growth of financial globalization.

Autoren

Antonio Coppola (Harvard University) Matteo Maggiori (Stanford University) Brent Neiman (University of Chicago ) Jesse Schreger (Columbia Business School)

Raum

Lecture Hall (A-032)