Included in the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 was a one-time tax holiday for the repatriation of foreign earnings by U.S. multinationals, which allowed 843 corporations to repatriate $362 billion at a reduced tax rate. Recently, Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, initiated an investigation to examine whether these firms used the repatriated earnings to generate jobs, as was intended. A new paper by University of Connecticut economist Dhammika Dharmapala examines how these firms spent the money and finds that very little was invested. Instead, firms used nearly all the money to buy back shares from shareholders.

Dharmapala will present the results from his paper. AEI research fellow Alex Brill and Georgetown University's Rohan Williamson will discuss the paper's findings and its implications for future tax policy. AEI resident scholar Alan D. Viard will moderate.