A significant research effort has been directed at establishing the determinants of foreign direct investment (FDI), with taxation policy identified as an important factor. However, the empirical literature has been limited in several respects, with most work focused exclusively on host country tax regimes. This paper seeks to extend the boundaries of FDI empirical inquiry by using a panel of nine investing tax exemption and tax credit countries over the period 1982-2000, constituting more than 85% of total US FDI inflows, and incorporating home country tax rates to analyse two as yet unanswered questions. First, are corporate income tax rates an important determinant of FDI in the US? Secondly, do investors from tax credit countries differ significantly in their tax response relative to those from tax exemption countries?

This paper investigates the effects of corruption on foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows controlling for other relevant determinants using a panel data approach for 45 countries over 1997-2004. While economic theory suggests that corruption should discourage FDI, many notably corrupt countries receive substantial FDI - an anomaly worthy of investigation. In common with other empirical work, we find no statistically significant impact of corruption on FDI. This suggests that policies designed to attract additional foreign FDI should focus on corporate income taxes and other determinants of investment rather than on the intractable problem of reducing the level of corruption.

Bangladesh began implementing a series of trade liberalization reforms in the early 1990s in an attempt to arrest a burgeoning trade deficit, but with little effect. This may be due to trade policies based on aggregate data that ignore the individual responses of Bangladesh's main trading partners. This study estimates the bilateral price and income export and import elasticities for Bangladesh's five major trading partners. The findings indicate that the bilateral elasticity estimates not only vary in magnitude among the countries, but also differ markedly from aggregate elasticity values estimated in previous studies. This suggests that policies should he tailored to trading partners to deliver the intended outcomes.

Rate-pegging has been in place in NSW for more than thirty years with broad support from all sides of politics. However, in late 2008 the NSW Government commissioned IPART to report on the adequacy of rate-pegging. IPART produced a Draft Report and then a Final Report, which has not yet been released by the NSW Government. Nevertheless, the NSW Government has made some changes to local government finance by way of capping developer charges, allowing IPART to make annual rate-pegging determinations, and enabling IPART to consider special variations in rate-pegging. Against this background, this paper considers the principles and practice of rate-pegging in NSW, the rationale for rate-pegging and counter-arguments on its desirability, as well as its economic effects on NSW local government finance relative to other Australian local government jurisdictions.

Numerous scholars have estimated the elasticities of the import demand function in many different countries using different data sets and different economic techniques. As yet no definitive conclusions can be drawn from this empirical literature despite the importance of import demand elasticities for trade policy in developing countries. This paper seeks to contribute to the empirical literature on import demand elasticities in developing countries by considering the case of Bangladesh. In contrast to this earlier work on import demand elasticities in Bangladesh, which all used aggregate data, this paper examines the likely impacts of trade liberalization policies on the disaggregated import function in Bangladesh for the period 1973 to 2004. Our main objective is to establish whether bilateral import elasticities are significantly different between major trading partners. A secondary objective is to determine whether bilateral import elasticities are significantly different between major trading partners. A secondary objective is to determine whether trade liberalization has had any impact on the import sector in Bangladesh.

Foreign direct investment in Sri Lanka has grown immensely since the initiation of economic reforms in 1977. Further escalations in FDI inflows are considered an integral component of the current Sri Lankan Government's intentions to foster economic growth. This paper examines the long-run effects on Sri Lanka's FDI inflows from changes in key macroeconomic variables of interest. Findings indicate that, of the five variables considered, the wage rate is the most important determinant of inbound FDI to Sri Lanka. However, other major economic indicators such as GDP, exchange rates, interest rates, and the level of external trade should also be given due consideration in policies designed to attract FDI inflows.

Taxation policy has been recognized as a main determinant of foreign direct investment (FDI). However, the effect of taxation policy on other key macro-economic variables of interest has received little attention in the literature. This paper seeks to establish the long-run effects of a change in the Australian company tax rate on inbound FDI and other Australian macro-economic variables using vector autoregression (VAR) analysis to account for the interrelatedness of the variables under consideration. Results indicate that FDI, real gross domestic product (GDP) and trade with the rest of the world are all responsive to a change in the company tax rate.

FDI is an important channel through which technology can be transferred across countries. The increased mobility of capital and the globalisation have influenced tax competition among countries to attract foreign investment. This paper investigates the effects of company tax rate on FDI stocks into Australia over the period 1960-2003 using time series econometric techniques. The results show that Australia has a potential to attract FDI by lowering its company tax rate. The findings suggest that lowering the taxes by host country to attract FDI would also in effect help the country to accumulate its technological stock enhancing its global competitiveness.

Outstanding external debt of Sri Lanka has mounted to a staggering level of US$ 10, 000 millions in 2003. Using data from the last five decades, this paper suggests that the capacity to service external debt is becoming a difficult task in the face of deteriorating terms of trade, mounting current account deficit, depreciating local currency value, heavy dependency on imports and tightening borrowing conditions. We find that Sri Lanka should not be too complacent about its external debt situation although it has received much needed foreign debt assistance in the form of debt write offs and debt moratoriums from its creditors after the disastrous Boxing Day tsunami.

This study investigates long run and short run relationships between the corporate income tax rate and foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows to the US. The tax rate is found to exert a significant negative effect on total FDI and transfer fund inflows in the long run. A 1% decrease in the tax rate would increase total FDI by 2.4% and transfer funds by 4.2%. Collectively, results suggest that the US can use tax policies to attract FDI from abroad. Concern over the possibility of tax competition among countries to attract foreign capital is warranted.