James R. Hines Jr. (born July 9, 1958) is an American economist and a founder of academic research into corporate-focused tax havens, and the effect of U.S. corporate tax policy on the behaviors of U.S. multinationals.
His papers were some of the first to analyse profit shifting, and to establish quantitative features of tax havens.
[5][6][7] In February 1994, Hines and his Harvard PhD student, Eric M. Rice, published their 1990 National Bureau of Economic Research ("NBER") working paper (No.
3477), in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, on the use of tax havens by U.S. multinationals, which contained a number of important findings.
[35] In December 2017, his papers were cited by Harvard Professor Mihir A. Desai as ones that: changed the field and provided the roadmap for much of the next thirty years.
His research in this area was cited, although sometimes controversially so, by the Council of Economic Advisors ("CEA") in drafting the TCJA legislation in 2017;[38] and advocating for reducing U.S. corporate taxes and moving to a hybrid "territorial" tax system framework, in order to drive U.S employment and wage growth.
[13] (†) Identified as one of the 5 Conduits (Ireland, Singapore, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom), by CORPNET in 2017.
(‡) Identified as one of the largest 5 Sinks (British Virgin Islands, Luxemburg, Hong Kong, Jersey, Bermuda), by CORPNET in 2017.