In the European Union and in many federal and non-federal countries, the central government pays subsidies to poor regions. These subsidies are often seen as a redistributive measure which comes at the cost of an efficiency loss. This paper develops an economic rationale for regional policy...

This text surveys the literature on the implications of international capital mobility for national tax policies. Our main issue for consideration in this survey is whether taxation of income, specifically capital income will survive, how border crossing investment is taxed relative to domestic...

This paper studies optimum income taxation in a small open economy where households differ with respect to their endowments with wealth. The government raises taxes on income from labor and wealth and a source tax on capital used in domestic production. To avoid taxes, households may, at some...

This paper analyses the implications of unemployment 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 coordination on welfare. We show that, while...

This paper studies the optimal taxation of capital income in a simple model of a small open economy where domestic residents can evade taxes on their foreign investment income. The national government can only tax domestic capital income and can impose capital controls, which however absorb real...

It is a striking feature of EU tax policy that countries find it difficult to agree on capital tax coordination. This is in conflict with the prevailing theoretical view, according to which tax coordination is beneficial. This paper develops a political economy argument which may help to explain...

This paper analyzes the welfare effects of capital tax coordination in a simple model of fiscal competition where fiscal policy is subject to majority voting and households differ with respect to their labor and capital income. It turns out that a coordinated capital tax increase may raise or...

It is well known that consumption-tax systems have several advantagesover existing income-tax systems, such as greater administrativesimplicity and intertemporal neutrality. Despite these advantages,proposals to introduce consumption taxes have only had very limitedsuccess. This paper discusses...

The paper uses the self-selection approach of 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 equilibrium, it...