Jordi Jofre-Monseny () (Universitat de Barcelona & IEB) Albert Solé-Ollé () (Universitat de Barcelona, IEB & CESifo)
Abstract
This paper examines the effects of agglomeration economies (AE) on the sensitivity of firm location to tax differentials. An initial reading of the story suggests that, with AE, when a firm moves into a community attracted by a tax reduction, other firms may decide to move in as well. This suggests that AE increase the sensitivity of firm location to local taxes. However, a second version of the story reads that, if economic activities are highly concentrated in space, AE might offset any tax differential, hence suggesting a reduction in this sensitivity. This paper provides a theoretical model of intraregional firm location with Marshallian AE that is able to generate both hypotheses: AE increase (decrease) the effect of taxes when locations are (are not) of a similar size. We then use Spanish municipal data for the period 1995-2002 to test these hypotheses, analyzing the combined effect of local business taxes and Marshallian AE on the intraregional location of employment. In line with the theory, a municipality with stronger AE experiences lower (higher) tax effects if it is sufficiently dissimilar (similar) to its neighbors in terms of size.
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Publisher Info
Paper provided by Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB) in its series Working Papers with number
2008/4.
Find related papers by JEL classification: R3 - Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics - - Production Analysis and Firm Location H32 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - Firm