We examine exogenous changes in state corporate income taxes over the 1988-2006 period and find that tax decreases significantly boost both the quantity, measured by the number of patents, and the quality, measured by citations per patent, of innovative output, while tax increases have little impact on innovation. Most of the impact of tax changes on innovation occurs two or more years after th...

An Evaluation of the Employment Effects of Barriers to Outsourcing Barriers to outsourcing that are being currently implemented in the US effectively tax its companies who “export” jobs through outsourcing. The objective is to raise domestic employment. Given that many of the important international markets where the US has a comparative advantage feature non-atomistic firms, we evaluate the im...

A tax buyout is a contract between tax authorities and a tax payer which reduces the marginal income tax rate in exchange for a lump-sum payment. While previous contributions have focussed on labour supply, we consider the interaction with tax evasion and show that a buyout can increase expected tax revenues. This will be the case if (1) the audit probability is constant and the penalty for eva...

“Strategic Nonlinear Income Tax Competition with Perfect Labor Mobility”

This text surveys the literature on the implications of international capital mobility for national tax policies. Our main issue for consideration in this survey is whether taxation of income, specifically capital income will survive, how border crossing investment is taxed relative to domestic investment and whether welfare gains can be achieved through international tax coordination. Our anal...

We analyze an oligopoly where public and private firms compete in quantity and R&D. Using general functions, we show that an output subsidy and an R&D tax can achieve the first-best allocation. Moreover, the degree of privatization does not influence the optimal output subsidy but does influence the optimal R&D tax. JEL Classification: H42; L13; L32;

This note characterizes the optimal base for commodity taxation in the presence of administrative fixed costs varying across goods. For low tax rates, the optimal base comprises all commodities whose discouragement index is greater than the ratio of their administrative costs to the tax they yield. JEL classification numbers: H21. Mots-clés : Taxation indirecte, TVA, assiette fiscale, coûts de ...