Event Description

Keynote: "Tax planning research: tales of project ‘success’ and ‘failure’"

Taxation, tax planning and offshore finance have continued to attract considerable attention by policy-makers and civic society campaigners. Taxation remains a contentious issue, but in many academic disciplines the topic remains comparatively under researched. This talk examines some of the challenges in undertaking research on the practices of tax planning, with a focus on some of the more tangible barriers. Drawing upon two of my studies, one a ‘success’ and another a ‘failure’, I offer some research findings, but also seek to draw out some of the difficulties and complexities of undertaking academic research in the field of tax. Through this comparative approach, I seek to suggest some mitigation strategies that can be used to support research design in an attempt to secure more favourable research outcomes, while highlighting potential pitfalls. In doing so, I hope to highlight the normality of ‘project failure’ and to stimulate conversations on how best to undertake research in the field of taxation. 

Keynote by: Dr. Thomas Wainwright, Reader in Strategy and International Business Royal Holloway, University of London

Dr Tom Wainwright is Reader in Strategy and Entrepreneurship at the School of Business and Management, Royal Holloway, University of London. Tom has a broad interdisciplinary outlook having completed a PhD in economic geography at the University of Nottingham, before moving to the Small Business Research Centre, and later, the University of Southampton’s Business School. His work broadly centres on financial services (real estate) through the lens of financialization and entrepreneurship in it’s various forms. Tom’s current projects examine the emergence of proptech and the financialization of real-estate carbon.

Paper 1: 'Intra-Industry Diffusion of Profit Shifting Strategies', the paper can be accessed here.

Paper presenter 1: Dr. Baptiste Souillard, Université Libre de Bruxelles

Baptiste is a PhD candidate in economics affiliated to the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) and the European Center for Advanced Research in Economics and Statistics (ECARES). He is also a research fellow at the Fund for Scientific Research (F.R.S.-FNRS).

His research lies at the intersection of international and public economics. More specifically, he combines approaches from economics, statistics, and accounting to analyze the causes, methods, and consequences of multinationals' tax avoidance.

He has received various awards for his research. Furthermore, he has written policy recommendations for the French Council of Economic Analysis and CEPII.

Besides presenting his work at numerous scientific events, he is currently a board member of the European Association of Young Economists (EAYE) and a member of the planning team of the Graduate Student International Political Economy (GSIPE) group. These communities foster interactions and collaboration both between young economists and between young researchers in economics, law, and political science working on international political economy.

Before starting his PhD, he studied at ENSAE Paris, Université Paris-Saclay, Paris School of Economics, and Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, where he completed an Engineering degree in statistics, an MRes in economics, and a BSc in econometrics.

Discussant 1: Associate Professor Dr. Catherine Lions, Umeå University

Catherine Lions is currently associate professor in business administration at Umea School of Business, Economics and Statistics, Umea University, Sweden.She belongs to the Accounting and Finance section.  She was awarded the title of excellent teacher at Umea University in 2016 and she won the USBE Pedagogical prize in 2021. Her research covers legitimacy gaps, performance and value creation in various contexts. She is editor of the Pan African Journal of Business Management.

Paper 2: 'Some Legal and Economic Reflections on the Issues of Control, Financialization and Taxation in the Indian Corporate Sector'

Paper presenter 2: Ph.D Student Mohit Kumar Gupta, Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

Mohit Kumar Gupta is a PhD scholar at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, New Delhi, India. Earlier, he has worked as a project associate on the research project “The State, Globalization and Industrial Development in India: The political economy of regulation and deregulation” at Ambedkar University Delhi in collaboration with the Norway Institute of International Affairs (NUPI). He had also briefly served as a research associate at the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, Delhi. In addition to this he has served as consultant and assisted on projects by various International agencies and NGOs including UN women, Public Services International etc. on areas of public finance and taxation.  Currently, he is working at the intersection of law and economics and his research interests are corporate governance, business taxation, political economy and the role of institutions. He has authored and co-authored chapters in edited volumes and journal articles on these issues which are published by International publishers. He has also presented his work highlighting the peculiar aspects of family-owned business groups in India in various International conferences related to Law and Economics, public policy and governance. He is the recipient of the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) Institutional Doctoral Fellowship in Social Science for the year 2019.

Discussant 2: Ph.D Student Ashrita Prasad, Vienna University of Economics and Business

Ashrita is a research and teaching associate and doctoral candidate in international business taxation (DIBT) at Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU). Ashrita pursued her master’s in law from University of Oxford as a KC Mahindra Scholar. She was Assistant Professor at Jindal Global Law School (India) between 2014 and 2019 where she taught tax law and policy. She was awarded the Abe Greenbaum Research Fellowship by UNSW, Sydney for 2018. Her research interests are tax policy and international taxation from the perspective of developing countries. 

The workshop will end with a 20 minute open floor discussion.