The taxman calls. How does Facebook answer? Global effects of taxation on online advertising
Dr Federica Liberini is an applied economist and is a Senior Postdoctoral researcher at ETH Zurich and a Research Associate at the University of Warwick. She will be giving a seminar based around her paper ‘The Taxman Calls. How Does Facebook Answer? Global Effects of Taxation on Online Advertising’ co-authored with Angel Cuevas, Ruben Cuevas, Andrea Lassman and Antonio Russo. In the paper the authors study the effects of the taxation of digital platforms on the online advertising market. We exploit novel data on daily unit prices of Facebook ads targeted to country-specific audiences, collected around a major change in the firm’s accounting practices following the introduction of the UK Diverted Profit Tax. They show that a substantial increase in ads prices followed such change, although with heterogeneous intensity across countries. These results are in line with a model of a platform operating in the global advertising market. They show that taxation of profits generated in one country makes the price charged to advertisers from that country (resp. other countries) increase (decrease). Accordingly, they demonstrate that aggregate advertising prices in OECD countries increased more, after the policy change, the larger is the market share of UK-based advertisers.
Date: 6 February 2019, 11:00 (Wednesday, 4th week, Hilary 2019)
Venue: Saïd Business School, Park End Street OX1 1HP
Venue Details: Boardroom in Main Building but report to Main Reception and ask for Pauline Simpson
Speaker: Dr Federica Liberini (ETH Zurich and University of Warwick)
Organising department: Saïd Business School
Organisers: Dr Martin Simmler (Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation), Dr Irem Guceri (Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation)
Organiser contact email address: pauline.simpson@sbs.ox.ac.uk
Part of: Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation Research Seminars
Booking required?: Required
Booking email: pauline.simpson@sbs.ox.ac.uk
Cost: Free
Audience: Members of the University only
Editor: Pauline Simpson