Tax incentives offered to attract firms engaged in foreign direct investment are often tied to performance requirements such as domestic content restrictions. The tax competition literature has repeatedly shown that competition between municipalities for mobile firms tends to drive taxes to low levels. One would expect a comparable result for burdensome performance requirements. Despite this, the evidence suggests that while taxes have indeed been driven down, performance requirements are as popular as ever. We explain this seeming conundrum by showing that in the presence of spillovers, binding performance requirements can act as a coordination device for firms. In equilibrium, municipalities choose performance requirements which maximize joint surplus from investment. Competition between municipalities then transfers this surplus to firms via tax subsidies.
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Find related papers by JEL classification: F21 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - International Investment; Long-Term Capital Movements F23 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - Multinational Firms; International Business H25 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Business Taxes and Subsidies
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
King, Ian & Welling, Linda, 1992.
"Commitment, Efficiency and Footloose Firms,"
Economica,
London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 59(233), pages 63-73, February.
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Black, Dan A & Hoyt, William H, 1989.
"Bidding for Firms,"
American Economic Review,
American Economic Association, vol. 79(5), pages 1249-56, December.
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