This paper analyses tax competition between a unionised and a non-unionised country for the location of an outside firm. We show that unionisation offers an extra incentive for the government to attract a foreign competitor to a concen- trated domestic market, in order to affect the behaviour of...

Heterogeneous firm productivity seems to provide an argument for governments to pursue `pick-the-winner' strategies by subsidizing highly productive firms more, or taxing them less, than their less productive counterparts. We appraise this argument by studying the optimal choice of effective tax...

In this paper we analyze the implications for the national provision of public inputs when pro t shifting is possible, albeit costly, for internationally integrated firms. In this case a high level of public infrastructure will attract real investment, but the rm can at least partly avoid to pay...

The paper analyzes the effects of a regionally coordinated profit tax in a model with three active countries, one of which is not part of the union, and a globally mobile firm. We show that regional tax coordination can lead to two types of welfare gains. First, for investments that would take...

We set up a two-country, regional model of trade in financial services. Competitive firms in each country manufacture untraded consumer goods in an uncertain productive environment, borrowing funds from a bank in either the home or the foreign market. Duopolistic banks can choose their levels of...

We analyze non-cooperative commodity taxation in a symmetric two- country trade model characterized by monopolistic competition and inter- national firm and capital mobility. In this setting, taxes in one country affect foreign welfare through the relocation of mobile firms and through changes...

This paper studies non-cooperative commodity taxation in a trade model with im-perfect competition and trade costs. Nationally optimal tax policy simultaneously tries to correct the domestic distortion from imperfect competition and to shift rents to the home country. Importantly, this trade-off...

Most systems of health care financing in EU member states currently include elements of income redistribution. The paper analyzes the effects of shifting this kind of redistribution to the tax system and argues that this reform could create two types of efficiency gains. On the expenditure side,...

This paper studies regulatory competition in the banking sector in a model where banks are heterogeneous and taxpayers come up for the losses of failing banks. Capital requirements force the weakest banks to exit the market. This gives rise to a signalling effect of capital standards, as...