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The Effect of Agglomeration Size on Local Taxes

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  • Eva Luthi
  • Kurt Schmidheiny

Abstract

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 activity are able to set positive tax rates without fearing to lose firms to peripheral regions as the firms would forego ‘rents’ from agglomeration economies. In this paper, we study whether local policy makers effectively tax such agglomeration rents. We test this with panel data from Swiss municipalities between 1985 and 2005. We find that large urban areas set indeed higher tax rates than small ones. This is consistent with the theoretical prediction. Within urban areas, however, municipal tax rates are unrelated to the size of economic activity in and around municipalities while they are positively related to the size of the political jurisdiction. We see this result as evidence that the standard tax competition model for asymmetric jurisdictions is at work in the competition of municipalities within an urban area. Both results are robust to controlling for reverse causality by using instrumental variables. Controlling for fixed effects in a 20 year panel is non-informative and neither supports nor contradicts these findings. As a robustness check we introduce an new measure of cluster intensity which considers the varying intensities in agglomeration economies across sectors.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by CESifo Group Munich in its series CESifo Working Paper Series with number 3426.

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Date of creation: 2011
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Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_3426

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Keywords: agglomeration; local taxation; corporate taxes; tax competition;

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References

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  1. Borck, Rainald & Pfluger, Michael, 2006. "Agglomeration and tax competition," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 647-668, April.
  2. Marius Brülhart & Mario Jametti & Kurt Schmidheiny, 2007. "Do agglomeration economies reduce the sensitivity of firm location to tax differentials?," Economics Working Papers 1062, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
  3. Hyun-Ju Koh & Nadine Riedel, 2010. "Do Governments Tax Agglomeration Rents?," Working Papers 1004, Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation.
  4. Hyun-Ju Koh & Nadine Riedel, 2010. "Do Governments Tax Agglomeration Rents?," CESifo Working Paper Series 2976, CESifo Group Munich.
  5. Fredrik Andersson & Rikard Forslid, 2000. "Tax Competition and Economic Geography," Econometric Society World Congress 2000 Contributed Papers 1356, Econometric Society.
  6. Kleibergen, Frank & Paap, Richard, 2006. "Generalized reduced rank tests using the singular value decomposition," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 133(1), pages 97-126, July.
  7. Baldwin, Richard E. & Krugman, Paul, 2004. "Agglomeration, integration and tax harmonisation," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 1-23, February.
  8. Kind, H.J. & Knarvik, K.H.M. & Schjelderup, G., 1999. "Competing for Capital in a "Lumpy" World," Papers 7/99, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration-.
  9. Brulhart, Marius & Jametti, Mario, 2006. "Vertical versus horizontal tax externalities: An empirical test," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(10-11), pages 2027-2062, November.
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  12. Sylvie Charlot & Sonia Paty, 2007. "Market access effect and local tax setting: evidence from French panel data," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 7(3), pages 247-263, May.
  13. Hyun-Ju Koh & Nadine Riedel, 2010. "Do governments tax agglomeration rents?," Working Papers 2010/21, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
  14. Beatrix Eugster & Raphaël Parchet, 2011. "Culture and Taxes: Towards Identifying Tax Competition," Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'Econométrie et d'Economie politique (DEEP) 11.05, Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, DEEP.
  15. Bacher, Hans Ulrich & Brülhart, Marius, 2010. "Progressive Taxes and Firm Births," CEPR Discussion Papers 7830, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  16. Cragg, John G. & Donald, Stephen G., 1993. "Testing Identifiability and Specification in Instrumental Variable Models," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 9(02), pages 222-240, April.
  17. Luca Crivelli & Massimo Filippini & Ilaria Mosca, 2006. "Federalism and regional health care expenditures: an empirical analysis for the Swiss cantons," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 15(5), pages 535-541.
  18. Zodrow, George R. & Mieszkowski, Peter, 1986. "Pigou, Tiebout, property taxation, and the underprovision of local public goods," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 356-370, May.
  19. Wilson, John D., 1986. "A theory of interregional tax competition," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 296-315, May.
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Cited by:
  1. Hansjörg Blöchliger & José Maria Pinero Campos, 2011. "Tax Competition Between Sub-Central Governments," OECD Working Papers on Fiscal Federalism 13, OECD Publishing.

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