We study the incentives that governments have to protect intellectual property in a trading world economy. We consider a world economy with ongoing innovation in two countries that differ in market size and in their capacities for innovation. We associate the strength of IPR protection with the...

We introduce transport cost of trade in products into the classical Zodrow and Mieszkowski (1986) model of capital tax competition. It turns out that even small levels of transport cost lead to a complete breakdown of the seminal result, the underprovision of public goods. Instead, there is a...

We analyze the optimal tax choices of a revenue-maximizing government that levies taxes from firms of which the true degree of mobility is ex ante unknown. Differential tax treatment of immobile and mobile firms is ruled out, but the government may learn from the firms' location responses to...

This paper analyses tax competition and tax coordination in a model where capital flows occur in the form of mergers and acquisitions, rather than greenfield investment. In this framework, we show that differences in residence based taxes do not necessarily distort international ownership...

The standard tax theory result that investment should not be distorted is based on the assumption that profits are locally bound. In this paper we analyze the optimal tax policy when firms are internationally mobile. We show that the optimal policy response to increasing firm mobility may be...

“Race-to-the-bottom” deregulation is to be expected when markets operate across the borders of countries that independently choose and enforce labor policies. Less obviously, in pre-crisis EMU reforms of labor market policies were uneven and related to international imbalances. That pattern...

We present a new model of tax induced transfer pricing as an alternative to the oft-used concealment model. Inspired by interviews with practitioners, we consider a large multinational firm which is audited by the tax authority in the high-tax location. When this country adjusts the transfer...

Labour incomes depend on structural as well as politico-economic factors, because labour market policies partially remedy the financial market imperfections that make labour income shocks difficult to insure, and have different implications for labour and capital income. This paper illustrates...