How does Economic Integration Change Personal Income Taxation? Evidence from a new Index of Potential Labor Mobility

In this paper, I estimate the effect of increasing labor mobility on personal income tax schedules. I combine rich data on effective personal income tax levels in a panel of OECD countries for the period 1986-2005 with a new Index of Potential Labor Mobility. This index allows to tackle issues of reverse causality and potentially confounding effects from strategic competition. Estimates show that increasing labor mobility accounts for a considerable part of lower tax burdens. Furthermore, the reduction is found to be constant across brackets of taxable income.