On October 17, the Finance Forum, which is chaired by Associate Professor Yuan Cheng from the Department of Finance, was held in SEPKU. The forum invited Prof. Ian Wooton, Vice Dean of Strathclyde University Business School, as the guest speaker. He made d keynote speech entitled “Does Tax Competition Make Mobile Firms More Footloose?".

Professor Wootton pointed out that the based on the analysis on tax competition to attract foreign direct investment, assuming that the government has only one strategic interaction with multinational companies, so the site selection of multinational companies will not change. However Professor Wooton and his collaborator have constructed a cross-time model when the company has the opportunity to adjust the site. The results show that the cross-tax competition makes the multinational corporations’ location choices effective. Moreover, multinational companies are more likely to choose different sites at different times than when there is no cross-tax competition. This is mainly because the host government will adopt fiscal policy to bear part of the enterprise migration costs.

Professor Ping Xinqiao, Associate Professor Xu Yuxiao, and scholars from other universities attended the forum. During the course of the report, the teachers and students who participated in the forum had an in-depth communication with Professor Wootton.