We develop a model of commodity tax competition with monopolistically competitive internationally mobile firms, transport costs, and asymmetric country sizes. We investigate the impacts of non-cooperative tax setting, as well as of tax harmonization and changes in the tax principle, in both the short and the long run. The origin principle, when compared to the destination principle, is shown to...

We develop a model of commodity tax competition with monopolistically competitive internationally mobile firms, transport costs, and asymmetric country sizes. We investigate the impacts of non-cooperative tax setting, as well as of tax harmonization and changes in the tax principle, in both the short and the long run. The origin principle, when compared to the destination principle, is shown to...

This paper provides a spatial-econometric analysis of the setting of property tax rates by Dutch municipalities. We find evidence of tax mimicking: a ten percent higher property tax rate in neighboring municipalities leads to a 3.5 percent higher tax rate. Mimicking is less pronounced in municipalities governed by coalitions backed by a large majority. This points to yardstick competition as th...

a r t i c l e i n f o We extend the model by Behrens et al. to the case of non-cooperative commodity taxation and investigate the impacts of tax harmonization and changes in tax principle on equilibrium tax rates, industry location, and welfare. Since our setup features internationally mobile firms, trade frictions, and asymmetric country sizes, it offers a convenient framework within which to ...

Tax evasion is modeled as a risky activity and integrated into a standard problem of optimal tax design. It is shown that there is a trade off between reducing tax evasion and reducing tax distortion. Thus it is efficient to supplement a broad-based wage tax by a tax on specific consumption if the former is evaded and the latter not. The optimal tax structure can be characterized by an explicit...

We report here a summary of our recent research on the effect that the race issue, in the United States, and the immigration issue in European countries, is having on the degree of redistribution and the size of the public sector that is implemented through political competition. We model political competition as taking place on a two dimensional policy space, where the first issue is the tax r...

A wide variety of social protection systems coexist within the EU. Some member states provide social insurance that is of Beveridgean inspiration (with universal and more or less flat benefits), while others offer a system that is mainly Bismarckian (with benefits related to past contributions). Labor mobility raises concerns about the sustainability of the most generous and redistributive (Bev...

I analyze how competition between localities affects tax breaks and business location decisions. Using data on firm-specific property tax exemptions, I begin by documenting that spatial competition substantially increases local tax breaks. To do so, I exploit variation in the number of counties near a town, which is correlated with competition but uncorrelated with other observable town charact...