Geopolitical risks, international taxation and organizational structure of multinational enterprises: interdisciplinary study of corporate law, tax law and business history

2018 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 16K13377
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Economic history
• Research Institution: Kyoto University
• Principal Investigator: KUROSAWA Takafumi 京都大学, 経済学研究科, 教授 (30294507)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): 松原 有里 明治大学, 商学部, 専任教授 (30436505) ; 井澤 龍 滋賀大学, 経済学部, 准教授 (30761225)
• Project Period (FY): 2016-04-01 – 2019-03-31
• Keywords: 経営史 / 会社法 / 税法 / 多国籍企業 / 国際租税 / 大戦 / 持株会社 / 政治リスク

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This research brought about following fact-findings: 1) diverse geopolitical risks and international taxation motivated multinational enterprises to set up holding companies and complicated schemes, which included voting trust and network of holding companies, etc.; 2) international public goods to cope with geopolitical risk during 1920s and 1930s turned to be social infrastructure of tax avoidance after WWII; 3) above-mentioned schemes had global scale, including Latin Americas and Africa; 4)there were two-fold causalities: strategy shaped structure, and structure remolded strategy; 5) national policies to cope with international double taxation had diversity, reflecting each nations position in the international business.

Free Research Field

経営史

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

従来の経営史学や多国籍企業論では，組織の戦略・構造の規定要因とされたのは主に経済的・市場的要素であり，政治的・地政学的要素は等閑視されてきた。経営史家と法学者による学際的研究組織で行われた本研究では，戦争・占領・接収・封鎖・迫害・経済制裁・ボイコット等の非経済的事象や，租税政策や会社法等の主権国家による制度・政策，主権国家間の競合関係の重要性を解明した。 各国の租税主権を脅かす租税回避地が地政学リスク回避目的の国際公共財として出現したこと，地政学リスクへの対応が持株会社の採用を促したという事実は，グローバル化の歴史解釈や経営史での戦略=組織構造に関する見方に修正を迫る。