Prof. Dr. Andrea Lassmann

International Trade and Taxation

Andrea Lassmann’s research focuses on topics in international trade and taxation. She is currently working on two projects that contribute to understanding aspects at the intersection of international trade and corporate taxes, and ones related to economic geography.

One project analyzes profit shifting through transfer pricing, a practice employed by multinational enterprises (MNEs) to optimize tax liabilities. It develops a theoretical model centered around a concealment cost function and explores micro-level data on exports and firm characteristics, alongside tax differentials across regions in Switzerland. These data are used to test the model’s predictions and to perform counterfactual analysis of variations in trade costs and trade policies. Moreover, the study posits that the decision to engage in transfer pricing is influenced by fixed costs and trade costs.

The second project focuses on understanding the role of domestic demand in shaping the spatial distribution of production. Leveraging digital advertising data from Meta's platforms covering three billion active users worldwide, the project constructs a novel measure of market demand. By linking this measure to data on international trade and multinational activity, the study aims to empirically test the predictions of the home-market effect (HME), which posits that the larger the demand for a given good in a country, the more production of that good takes place domestically, leading a country to export goods with high domestic demand. This research aims to offer theoretical and empirical insights into the determinants and implications of the HME for global production patterns, informing the academic discourse and policy considerations in international trade.

Andrea Lassmann holds the Chair of International Economic Policy at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. Previously, she has held positions at the OECD and ETH Zurich. She received her PhD from ETH Zurich in 2012.