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Vertical Versus Horizontal Tax Externalities: An Empirical Test

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  • Marius Brülhart
  • Mario Jametti

Abstract

We study taxation externalities in federations of benevolent governments. Where different hierarchical government levels tax the same base, one can observe two types of externalities: a horizontal externality, working among governments of the same level and leading to tax rates that are too low compared to the social optimum; and a vertical externality, working between different levels of government and leading to suboptimally high tax rates. Building on the model of Keen and Kotsogiannis (2002), we derive a discriminating hypothesis to distinguish vertical and horizontal tax externalities based on measurable variables. This test is applied to a panel data set on local taxes in a sample of Swiss municipalities that feature direct-democratic fiscal decision making, so as to maximize the correspondence with the "benevolent" governments of the theory. We find that vertical externalities dominate - they are thus an observed empirical phenomenon as well as a notable extension to the theory of tax competition.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by McMaster University in its series Department of Economics Working Papers with number 2004-14.

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Length: 43 pages
Date of creation: 2004
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:mcm:deptwp:2004-14

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Citations

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Cited by:
  1. Fredriksson, Per & Mamun, Khawaja, 2009. "Tobacco Politics and Electoral Accountability in the United States," Working Papers 2009003, Sacred Heart University, John F. Welch College of Business.
  2. Florence TOUYA, 2009. "Tax Interactions with Asymmetric Information and Nonlinear Instruments," Working Papers 9, CATT - UPPA - Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour, revised Nov 2009.
  3. Ernesto Crivelli & Christian Volpe Martincus, 2007. "Horizontal and Vertical Tax Externalities in a Multicountry World," Bonn Econ Discussion Papers bgse8_2007, University of Bonn, Germany.
  4. Luiz de Mello, 2007. "The Brazilian 'Tax War': The Case of Value-Added Tax Competition among the States," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 544, OECD Publishing.
  5. Francisco Delgado & Matías Mayor, 2011. "Tax mimicking among local governments: some evidence from Spanish municipalities," Portuguese Economic Journal, Springer, vol. 10(2), pages 149-164, August.
  6. Marcelin Joanis, 2009. "Intertwined Federalism: Accountability Problems under Partial Decentralization," CIRANO Working Papers 2009s-39, CIRANO.
  7. Choi, Kangsik, 2012. "Indirect Taxation and Privatization in a Model of Government's Preference," MPRA Paper 42968, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  8. Sigrid Roehrs & David Stadelmann, 2010. "Mobility and local income redistribution," Working Papers 2010/4, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
  9. Lang, Gunnar, 2012. "Lessons of the financial crisis for the attractiveness of European financial centers," ZEW Discussion Papers 12-080, ZEW - Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung / Center for European Economic Research.
  10. David Stadelmann, 2009. "Which Factors Capitalize into House Prices? A Bayesian Averaging Approach," CREMA Working Paper Series 2009-10, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).
  11. Eva Luthi & Kurt Schmidheiny, 2011. "The Effect of Agglomeration Size on Local Taxes," CESifo Working Paper Series 3426, CESifo Group Munich.
  12. Sotiris Karkalakos & Christos Kotsogiannis, 2007. "A spatial analysis of provincial corporate income tax responses: evidence from Canada," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 40(3), pages 782-811, August.
  13. Fredriksson, Per G. & Mamun, Khawaja A., 2008. "Vertical externalities in cigarette taxation: Do tax revenues go up in smoke?," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(1), pages 35-48, July.
  14. Kazuko Miyamoto, 2009. "A New Approach to Estimating Tax Interactions in Fiscal Federalism," Global COE Hi-Stat Discussion Paper Series gd08-053, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University.
  15. Fredriksson, Per & Mamun, Khawaja, 2009. "Gubernatorial Reputation and Vertical Tax Externalities: All Smoke, No Fire?," Working Papers 2009002, Sacred Heart University, John F. Welch College of Business.
  16. Boadway, Robin & Tremblay, Jean-François, 2012. "Reassessment of the Tiebout model," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(11), pages 1063-1078.
  17. Geys, Benny & Konrad, Kai A., 2010. "Federalism and optimal allocation across levels of governance," Discussion Papers, Research Professorship & Project "The Future of Fiscal Federalism" SP II 2010-09, Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB).
  18. Gordon, Roger H. & Cullen, Julie Berry, 2012. "Income redistribution in a Federal system of governments," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(11), pages 1100-1109.

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