This paper examines capital tax competition in the presence of an interstate transfer policy without federal commitment. Lack of commitment implies that tax policy is chosen prior to federal transfers. The paper s main result is that ex-post federal policy internalizes horizontal fiscal...

This paper shows how a popular system of federal revenue equalization grants can limit tax competition among subnational governments, correct fiscal externalities, and increase government spending. Remarkably, an equalization grant can implement efficient policy choices by regional governments,...

Most cities enjoy some autonomy over how they tax their residents, and that autonomy is typically exercised by multiple municipal governments within a given city. In this chapter, we document patterns of city-level taxation across countries, and we review the literature on a number of salient...

Our paper extends the capital tax competition literature by incorporating heterogeneous capital and agglomeration. Our model nests the standard tax competition model as well as the special case in which there is agglomeration but no firm/capital heterogeneity and the opposite case, firm...

We study corporate income tax competition when firms operating in multiple jurisdictions can shift income using financial planning strategies. Several such strategies, particularly intra-corporate lending, appear to be actively pursued by companies to reduce subnational corporate taxes in...

We study the choice of club membership, when member-countries national governments set their tax policies non-cooperatively. Federal policy (in the form of club membership) has a higher constitutional status than national policies (in the form of income tax rates). This allows federal policy to...

While the old systems competition took place with closed borders, globalisation has brought about a new type of systems competition that is driven by the mobility of factors of production. The new systems competition will likely imply the erosion of the European welfare state, induce a race to...

With the completion of EMU, tax competition and, more in general, locational competition is high on the EU policy agenda. In contrast to the standard neo-classical reasoning, recent advances in the theory of trade and location have shown that tax competition does not necessarily lead to a race...

This paper uses a new economic geography model to analyze tax competition betweeen two countries trying to attract internationally mobile capital. Each government may levy a source tax on capit al and a lump sum tax on fixed labor. If industry is concentrated in one of the countries, the...

Standard tax competition models predict a "race-to-the-bottom" of corporate tax rates when firms are mobile. Recent theoretical literature has qualified this view by offering a theoretical explanation why this extreme prediction need not occur: central regions with large clusters of economic...