Tax Competition and Economic Geography

Economic geography with tariff competition

A simple two-country model of economic geography is constructed in order to examine the effect of tariff competition on the spatial distribution of manufacturing activities as well as on welfare. We show that when the transport cost is sufficiently small, tariff competition with firm migration leads to a core-periphery economy, where one of the two countries imposes no tariff in Nash equilibriu...

Tax evasion, "scal competition and economic integration

This paper examines the implications of tax evasion for "scal competition and tax harmonization policies in an economic union. First, for symmetric countries, it proves that the equilibrium values of the tax and audit rates are less than optimal. Tax harmonization alone will also lead to a less than optimal audit rate. Second, for asymmetric countries, the paper shows that integration may turn ...

State Capacity, Capital Mobility, and Tax Competition

Abstract The theory of international tax competition suggests that governments attempt to attract mobile capital bases by undercutting the foreign capital tax rate. An analysis of the role that state capacity plays in tax policymaking under international pressures is, however, missing. The central contribution of our study is to highlight the importance of the interaction between state capaci...

Economic geography

Agglomeration and Tax Competition

Tax competition for a mobile factor is different in ‘new economic geography settings’ compared to standard tax competition models. The agglomeration rent which accrues to the mobile factor in the core region can be taxed. Moreover, a tax differential between the core and the periphery can be maintained. The present paper reexamines this issue in a setting which, in addition to the core-peripher...