We analyse tax competition between two countries of unequal size trying to attract a foreign-owned monopolist. When national governments have only a lump-sum profit tax (subsidy) at their disposal, but face exogenous and identical transport costs for imports, then both countries will be willing...

This article analyses tax competition between a unionised and a non-unionised country for the location of an outside firm. We show that unionisation increases the incentive for the government to attract a foreign investor, in order to affect the behaviour of the domestic union. This results in...

Current policy initiatives taken by the EU and the OECD aim at abolishing preferential corporate tax regimes. This note extends Keen’s (2001) analysis of symmetric capital tax competition under preferential (or discriminatory) and non-discriminatory tax regimes to allow for countries of...

This article analyzes the conditions under which the smaller of two otherwise identical countries prefers the noncooperative Nash equilibrium to a situation of fully harmonized tax rates. A standard two-country model of capital tax competition is extended by allowing for transaction costs,...

We set up a model of generalised oligopoly where two countries of different size compete for an exogenous, but variable, number of identical firms. The model combines a desire by national governments to attract internationally mobile firms with the existence of location rents that arise even in...

The tax competition for mobile capital, in particular the reluctance of small countries to agree on measures of tax coordination, has ongoing political and economic fallouts within Europe. We analyse the effects of introducing a two tier structure of capital taxation, where the asymmetric member...

Following recent court rulings, cross-border loss compensation for multinational firms will likely be introduced, at least in Europe. This paper analyzes the effects of introducing a coordinated cross-border tax relief in a setting where multinational firms choose the size of a risky investment...

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...

Thin capitalization rules have become an important element in the corporate tax systems of developed countries. This paper sets up a model where national and multinational firms choose tax-efficient financial structures and countries compete for multinational firms through statutory tax rates...

This paper reviews the recent theoretical literature that analyzes the European Union’s policy to eliminate preferential corporate-tax regimes and the proposal to introduce a consolidated EU tax base with formula apportionment for the taxation of multinational firms. Since neither proposal...