In many OECD countries, statutory corporate tax rates are lower than personal income tax rates. The present paper argues that this tax rate differentiation is an optimal tax policy if there are problems of asymmetric information between investors and firms in the capital market. The reduction of...

Recent contributions to the theory of taxation in imperfect labour markets argue that tax progression raises welfare and employment in the presence of involuntary unemployment. The underlying theoretical analysis takes the endowment of workers with human capital as given. It is well known,...

This paper analyses the implications of unemloyment for fiscal competition and tax coordination among small open economies. Unemployment is modeled as resulting from wage bargaining. The analysis focuses on the effect of labour and capital tax co-ordination on welfare. We show that, while...

The paper uses the self-selection approach of Stiglitz (1982) to study tax competition and tax coordination in a many country-optimum income tax model. In the model, the government can impose a non-linear tax schedule on wage income and a (source-based) tax on mobile capital. In an uncoordinated...

In many OECD countries, statutory corporate tax rates are lower than personal income tax rates. The present paper argues that this tax rate differentiation is an optimal tax policy if there are problems of asymmetric information between investors and firms in the capital market. The reduction of...