Fotis Delis

I am an Economist at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission in Seville, where I build microsimulation models of corporate taxation and study profit-shifting behaviour by multinational enterprises. My research combines firm-level panel data with nonparametric estimation to measure how MNEs respond to tax incentives and to quantify the extent of profit shifting. I then use quasi-experimental designs to identify its main drivers and economic consequences. Recent work appears in the Journal of Accounting and Economics and the European Accounting Review.

During my earlier years as a financial consultant, I specialised in intra-company transfer pricing and MNE profit shifting — experience that continues to inform the questions I study today.

The interactive profit-shifting explorer accompanies the JAE (2025) paper and lets you browse country-year and industry-year estimates for over 100 countries and 19 industries, 2009–2020.

Selected publications and working papers

JAE
Global Evidence on Profit Shifting Within Firms and Across Time

Fotis Delis, Manthos D. Delis, Luc Laeven, and Steven Ongena

Journal of Accounting and Economics, 2025

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We provide estimates of profit shifting for over 2 million firm-year observations in 100 countries over the period 2009–2020. Employing nonparametric estimation techniques within a mainstay model of profit shifting, we examine how the profits of both parent and subsidiary firms within a multinational group respond to marginal changes in the composite tax indicator. The key advantage of this approach is that it yields firm-year estimates of profit shifting. Multinational firms engage in extensive profit shifting by maintaining affiliates in low-tax countries and zero-tax havens. Multinational groups with an ultimate tax-haven owner exhibit the largest profit response to tax incentives. Our new database opens important avenues for analyzing the sources and effects of profit shifting.
@article{delis2025jae, title = {Global Evidence on Profit Shifting Within Firms and Across Time}, author = {Delis, Fotis and Delis, Manthos D. and Laeven, Luc and Ongena, Steven}, journal = {Journal of Accounting and Economics}, volume = {79}, number = {2}, year = {2025}, doi = {10.1016/j.jacceco.2024.101744}, }
EAR
Corporate Governance and Profit Shifting: The Role of the Audit Committee

Fotis Delis, Manthos D. Delis, Panagiotis Karavitis, and Kenneth Klassen

European Accounting Review, 2023

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We examine tax-motivated profit shifting as the outcome of corporate governance characteristics in multinational enterprises (MNEs). We propose a novel subsidiary-year measure of profit shifting, estimated from the responses of subsidiary profits to exogenous parent earnings shocks. Subsequently, we hypothesize that audit committee size and experience, as well as CEO duality are key factors affecting profit shifting. Our baseline results show that increasing audit committee size by one standard deviation increases profit shifting by an economically significant 7.8%. We also find that this positive effect reverses for MNEs with higher numbers of audit committee members who have audit expertise and for MNEs without CEO duality.
@article{delis2023ear, title = {Corporate Governance and Profit Shifting: The Role of the Audit Committee}, author = {Delis, Fotis and Delis, Manthos D. and Karavitis, Panagiotis and Klassen, Kenneth}, journal = {European Accounting Review}, volume = {32}, pages = {809--839}, year = {2023}, doi = {10.1080/09638180.2021.2003216}, }
WP

The Pricing of Profit Shifting

Fotis Delis, Manthos D. Delis, Sotirios Kokas, Luc Laeven, and Steven Ongena

2026

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We examine how equity markets price profit shifting by multinational enterprises. Using novel firm-year estimates for 39,437 MNE-year observations across 88 countries (2010–2020), we find that profit shifting predicts higher stock returns, with a one-standard-deviation increase corresponding to about 12 basis points per month. The premium emerges after the OECD’s BEPS initiative and persists after the U.S. TCJA. Evidence from the UK Diverted Profits Tax links this premium to enforcement risk. It is not spanned by standard asset-pricing factors, is absent in countries without enforcement, and cannot be explained by performance or demand-based channels.