This in-progress webpage aims to centralize valuable resources for those working on (or simply interested in) tax avoidance and profit shifting. It lists 100+ databases that can be used to delve into the topic and some review articles. There is also some material on data analysis and visualization.
Please let me know if I'm missing anything!
DATA
Activity of Multinational Enterprises Database (OECD)
Alphacast
Amadeus (Bureau Van Dijk)
Analytical Database on Individual Multinationals and Affiliates (OECD)
Atlas of Economic Complexity (Harvard Growth Lab)
Audit reports (US Federal Audit Clearinghouse)
Balanced Trade in Services Dataset (OECD and WTO)
Bilateral Financial Secrecy Index (Tax Justice Network)
Bilateral profit shifting flows/Missing profits (Tørsløv, Wier, and Zucman)
Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey (EBRD)
Business Formation Statistics (US Census Bureau)
CbCR Company Database Explorer (EU Tax Observatory)
CBT Tax Database (Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation)
Center for International Data (UC Davis)
ComExt Intra- & Extra-European trade database (Eurostat)
Competitiveness Database (CompNet)
Compustat North America/Global (S&P Global Market Intelligence)
Comtrade Database (UN)
CongressData (Grossman, Lucas, McCrain, and Ostrander)
Congress.gov API
Consolidated and locational banking statistics (BIS)
Content of Deep Trade Agreements Database (World Bank)
Controlled Foreign Company Rules Database (OECD)
Coordinated Direct Investment Survey (IMF)
Corporate Tax Haven Index (Tax Justice Network)
Corporate tax rates (European Commission)
Corporate tax rates (KPMG)
Corporate tax rates (OECD)
Corporate tax rates (Tax Foundation)
Corpwatch API
Corruption Perceptions Index (Transparency International)
Country-by-Country Report Statistics Explorer (EU Tax Observatory)
Country-by-Country Reporting data (OECD)
Country codes (World Data)
County Business Patterns Database (Eckert, Fort, Schott, and Yang)
DB Nomics (CEPREMAP)
Design of Trade Agreements Database
Dispute Settlement and Case Law Project (WTO)
Diverse French data (French Government)
Domestic and International Common Language Database (Gurevich, Herman, Toubal, and Yotov)
Déclarations Annuelles de Données Sociales (INSEE)
Economics & Business Data Center (LMU Munich and ifo Institute)
Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval system (SEC)
Electronic Database of Investment Treaties (World Trade Institute)
Enquête FARE/FICUS (INSEE)
Enquête LIaisons FInancières entre sociétés (INSEE)
Eora Global Supply Chain Database (KGM & Associates)
Equilar
Eurobarometer (European Union)
ExecuComp (S&P Global Market Intelligence)
Executive compensation 1936-2005 (Frydman and Saks)
Exporter Dynamics Database (World Bank)
European Union Labor Force Survey (Eurostat)
Financial Secrecy Index Database (Tax Justice Network)
FinFlows Dataset (ECFIN - JRC)
Fiscal Decentralisation Database (OECD)
Foreign Affiliates Statistics (Eurostat)
Foreign Direct Investments of Korean Firms (Korean Exporting Import Bank)
Form 5500 Datasets (Employee Benefits Security Administration)
Gabors Data Analysis repository (Békés and Kézdi)
GEODIST (CEPII)
GlobalData
Global Offshore Wealth (EU Tax Observatory)
Global Preferential Trade Agreements Database (WITS)
Global Repository of Income Dynamics (Guvenen, Pistaferri, and Violante)
Global Revenue Statistics Database (OECD)
Global Sanctions Database (Felbermayr, Khirilakha, Syropoulos, Yalcin, and Yotov)
Global Tax Expenditures Database (Council on Economic Policies and German Development Institute)
Global Trade Analysis Project databases (GTAP)
Global Value Chain Database (UNCTAD-Eora)
Government Revenue Dataset (UNU-WIDER)
Historical Financial Research Data (Yale)
Income Inequality Database (Ranaldi and Milanovic)
Informal Sector Enterprise Surveys (World Bank)
Intellectual Property Statistics (WIPO)
International Capital Flows database by sector (Avdjiev, Hardy, Kalemli-Ozcan, and Servén)
International Labor Force database (IPUMS)
International Tax Competitiveness Index (Tax Foundation)
International Trade and Production Database for Estimation (Borchert, Larch, Shikher, and Yotov)
International Trade Data (Schott)
Investment Map (ITC)
Labor Force Statistics (CPS, US Bureau of Labor Statistics)
Labour Force Surveys (ILO)
Macrohistory Database (Jordà, Schularick, and Taylor)
Manufacturing Industry Database (NBER-CES)
Market Potentials (CEPII)
Markup data (De Loecker)
MergerCite (Málek)
MiDi Mikrodatenbank Direktinvestitionen (Bundesbank)
MultiLateral Investment Matching Database (OECD)
Multilateral Price Levels and Currency Misalignments (CEPII)
Multinational Production Data (Ramondo, Rodriguez-Clare, and Tintelnot)
Multinational Production Data (Alviarez)
M&A database (Refinitiv/Thomson Reuters)
National Agricultural Statistics Service (USDA)
Offshore Leaks Database (ICIJ)
Old World Trade Routes Project (Ciolek)
Open Data for Tax Justice (Tax Justice Network)
Orbis (Bureau Van Dijk)
Our World in Data
Pandemic-Era Trade Policies in Food and Medical Products (Global Trade Alert)
Phantom and Real FDI (Damgaard, Elkjaer, and Johannesen)
Political Parties, Presidents, Elections, and Governments Database (WZB Berlin Social Science Center)
Product Level Trade Estimated Elasticities (CEPII)
Quadros de Pessoal (Instituto Nacional de Estatística)
Quality of Government data (University of Gothenburg)
Realtime Inequality (Blanchet, Saez, and Zucman)
Regional Trade Agreements Database (Larch)
Related Party Database (US Census Bureau)
RICardo Project on trade between nations from 1800 to 1938 (Dedinger and Girard, Sciences Po)
R&D tax incentives (Bösenberg and Egger)
Services Trade Restrictiveness Index Regulatory Database (OECD)
Social Data Science Hub (University of Edinburgh)
Socio-economic Database for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEDLAS)
Sozio-oekonomisches Panel (DIW Berlin)
SOUTHMOD Simulating tax and benefit policies for development (UNU-WIDER)
Standardized World Income Inequality Database (Solt)
Structural Gravity Database (WTO)
Tariff Bindings Database (WTO)
Tax Deficit Simulator (EU Tax Observatory)
Tax Introduction Database (Seelkopf, Bubek, Eihmanis, Ganderson, Limberg, Mnaili, Zuluaga, and Genschel)
Tax rates (Vegh and Vuletin)
Tax Treaties Explorer (International Centre for Tax and Development)
Temporary Trade Barriers Database (World Bank)
Trade Cost Database (UNESCAP - World Bank)
Trade in Value Added Database (OECD)
Trade Map (ITC)
Trade maps (WTO)
Trade Related Illicit Financial Flows (Global Finance Integrity)
TRAINS Database (UNCTAD)
Transfer pricing rules and practices in Latin American and Caribbean countries [CIAT] (Inter-American Center of Tax Administrations)
UNCTADstat
Understanding Economics (Stantcheva)
Union Membership and Coverage Database (Hirsch and Macpherson)
US Direct Investment Abroad Database (BEA)
US MNEs Country-by-Country Reports (IRS)
US International Trade Data (US Census Bureau)
V-Party Dataset (V-Dem Institute)
WageIndicator (Global Labor Organization)
World Bank Enterprise Surveys (World Bank)
World Income Inequality Database (UNU-WIDER)
World Inequality Database (World Inequality Lab)
World Input-Output Database (European Commission)
World Management Survey (CEP)
World Scope (Refinitiv)
World Tax Database (Michigan University)
World Tax Indicators (Georgia State University)
World Values Surveys
Zephyr M&A Database (Bureau Van Dijk)
SURVEYS ON CORPORATE TAX AVOIDANCE & PROFIT SHIFTING
Alm, J. (2019). What motivates tax compliance?. Journal of Economic Surveys, 33(2), 353-388.
Asen, E. (2021). What we know: Reviewing the academic literature on profit shifting. Tax Notes Federal, 171(8), 1211-1223.
Beer, S., De Mooij, R., & Liu, L. (2020). International corporate tax avoidance: A review of the channels, magnitudes, and blind spots. Journal of Economic Surveys, 34(3), 660-688.
Bradbury, D., Hanappi, T., & Moore, A. (2018). Estimating the fiscal effects of base erosion and profit shifting: Data availability and analytical issues. Transnational Corporations, 25(2), 91-106.
Clausing, K. A. (2020). How big is profit shifting?. (2020). SSRN Working Papers, 3503091.
Cobham, A., Garcia-Bernardo, J., Jansky, P., & Palansky, M. (2021). Statistical measurement of illicit financial flows in sustainable development goals: Tax avoidance by multinational corporations. IES Working Papers, 24/2021.
Cobham, A., & Janský, P. (2020). Estimating illicit financial flows: A critical guide to the data, methodologies, and findings. Oxford University Press.
Cooper, M., & Nguyen, Q. T. (2020). Multinational enterprises and corporate tax planning: A review of literature and suggestions for a future research agenda. International Business Review, 29(3), 101692.
Dharmapala, D. (2019). Profit shifting in a globalized world. AEA Papers and Proceedings, 109, 488-492.
Dharmapala, D. (2014). What do we know about base erosion and profit shifting? A review of the empirical literature. Fiscal Studies, 35(4), 421-448.
Fuest, C., & Riedel, N. (2009). Tax evasion, tax avoidance and tax expenditures in developing countries: A review of the literature. Report prepared for the UK Department for International Development (DFID), 44.
Garcia-Bernardo, J., & Janský, P. (2022). Profit shifting of multinational corporations worldwide. arXiv preprint arXiv:2201.08444.
Gebhart, M. S. (2017). Measuring corporate tax avoidance – An analysis of different measures. Junior Management Science, 2(2), 43-60.
Hanlon, M., & Heitzman, S. (2010). A review of tax research. Journal of Accounting and Economics, 50(2-3), 127-178.
Hebous, S. (2014). Money at the docks of tax havens: A guide. FinanzArchiv/Public Finance Analysis, 70(3), 458-485.
Jacob, M. (2022). Real effects of corporate taxation: A review. European Accounting Review, 31(1), 269-296.
Khelil, I., & Khlif, H. (2022). Tax avoidance in family firms: A literature review. Journal of Financial Crime, forthcoming.
Kovermann, J., & Velte, P. (2021). CSR and tax avoidance: A review of empirical research. Corporate Ownership and Control, 18(2), 20-39.
Kovermann, J., & Velte, P. (2019). The impact of corporate governance on corporate tax avoidance — A literature review. Journal of International Accounting, Auditing and Taxation, 36, 100270.
Krieg, K. S., & Li, J. (2021). A review of corporate social responsibility and reputational costs in the tax avoidance literature. Accounting Perspectives, 20(4), 477-542.
Riedel, N. (2018). Quantifying international tax avoidance: A review of the academic literature. Review of Economics, 69(2), 169-181.
Tang, T. Y. (2020). A review of tax avoidance in China. China Journal of Accounting Research, 13(4), 327-338.
Temouri, Y., Budhwar, P., Jones, C., Ylönen, M., Pereira, V., & Cobham, A. (2022). Tax havens and international business: A conceptual framework of accountability‐avoiding foreign direct investment. International Journal of Management Reviews, 24(3), 309-332.
Tørsløv, T., Wier, L., & Zucman, G. (2022). The missing profits of nations. Review of Economic Studies, forthcoming.
Unger, B., Rossel, L., & Ferwerda, J. (2021). Combating fiscal fraud and empowering regulators: Bringing tax money back into the COFFERS. Oxford University Press.
Wang, F., Xu, S., Sun, J., & Cullinan, C. P. (2020). Corporate tax avoidance: A literature review and research agenda. Journal of Economic Surveys, 34(4), 793-811.
Wilde, J. H., & Wilson, R. J. (2018). Perspectives on corporate tax planning: Observations from the past decade. Journal of the American Taxation Association, 40(2), 63-81.
ANALYSIS & VISUALIZATION
An Economist’s Guide to Visualizing Data (Schwabish)
Coding for Economists (Turrell)
Data Analysis for Business, Economics, and Policy (Békés and Kézdi)
Data Visualization: A practical introduction (Healy)
DIME Wiki
Flourish Studio
From Data to Viz (Healy and Holtz)
Fundamentals of Data Visualization (Wilke)
GGPLOT2: Elegant Graphics for Data Analysis (Wickham)
Intro to Data Visualization (Turrell)
Introduction to Geographic Data Science (Rowe)
Plotly Graphing Libraries
R for Data Science (Wickham and Grolemund)
Stata bimap package (Asjad Naqvi)
Stata Coding Guide (Julian Reif)
Stata Cheat Sheets (Stata)
Stata Dataviz packages (Asjad Naqvi)
Stata to LaTex guide (Asjad Naqvi)
Story Telling With Data blog
Text Data in Economics (Ash)
ECONOMETRICS
Applied Empirical Method (Goldsmith-Pinkham)
Bayes rules! (Dogucu, Johson, and Ott)
Causal Inference (Cunningham)
Causal Inference with Applications (Matt Blackwell)
Causal Machine Learning (Michael C. Knaus)
Difference-in-differences dropbox (Woolridge)
Introduction to Econometrics with R (Hanck, Arnold, Gerber, and Schmelzer)
Introductory Econometrics: A Modern Approach (Woolridge)
Mostly Harmless Econometrics (Angrist and Pischke)
Network Data (Graham)
The DiD reading group (Taylor Wright)
The DiD repository (Naqvi)
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Markup Estimation (De Ridder, Grassi, and Morzenti)