IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/usg/econwp/201339.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Culture and Taxes: Towards Identifying Tax Competition

Author

Listed:
  • Eugster, Beatrix
  • Parchet, Raphaël

Abstract

We propose a difference-in-differences strategy to identify the existence of interjurisdictional tax competition, and to estimate its spatial reach. Our strategy rests on differences between desired tax levels, determined by culture-specific preferences, and equilibrium tax levels, determined by interjurisdictional fiscal externalities as well as by preferences. While fiscal preferences differ systematically and demonstrably between French-speaking and German-speaking Swiss regions, we find that local income tax burdens do not change discretely at the language border but exhibit smooth spatial gradients. The slope of these gradients implies that tax competition constrains tax choices of jurisdictions with a preference for higher taxes up to a distance of around 20 kilometers. Hence, tax competition does constrain income taxation by local governments but its effect is confined to a small spatial scale.

Suggested Citation

  • Eugster, Beatrix & Parchet, Raphaël, 2013. "Culture and Taxes: Towards Identifying Tax Competition," Economics Working Paper Series 1339, University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:usg:econwp:2013:39
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://ux-tauri.unisg.ch/RePEc/usg/econwp/EWP-1339.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Roland Bénabou & Jean Tirole, 2006. "Belief in a Just World and Redistributive Politics," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 121(2), pages 699-746.
    2. Brülhart, Marius & Jametti, Mario, 2019. "Does tax competition tame the Leviathan?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 177(C), pages 1-1.
    3. Alberto Alesina & George-Marios Angeletos, 2005. "Fairness and Redistribution," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(4), pages 960-980, September.
    4. Lovenheim, Michael F., 2008. "How Far to the Border?: The Extent and Impact of Cross-Border Casual Cigarette Smuggling," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 61(1), pages 7-33, March.
    5. Gilles Duranton & Laurent Gobillon & Henry G. Overman, 2011. "Assessing the Effects of Local Taxation using Microgeographic Data," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 121(555), pages 1017-1046, September.
    6. Eric Smith & Tracy Webb, 2001. "Tax Competition, Income Differentials and Local Public Services," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 8(5), pages 675-691, November.
    7. Janeba, Eckhard & Peters, Wolfgang, 1999. "Tax Evasion, Tax Competition and the Gains from Nondiscrimination: The Case of Interest Taxation in Europe," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 109(452), pages 93-101, January.
    8. Chirinko, Robert S. & Wilson, Daniel J., 2008. "State investment tax incentives: A zero-sum game?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(12), pages 2362-2384, December.
    9. Wilson, John Douglas, 1999. "Theories of Tax Competition," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 52(2), pages 269-304, June.
    10. Devereux, Michael P. & Lockwood, Ben & Redoano, Michela, 2008. "Do countries compete over corporate tax rates?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(5-6), pages 1210-1235, June.
    11. Keen, Michael, 2001. "Preferential Regimes Can Make Tax Competition Less Harmful," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 54(n. 4), pages 757-62, December.
    12. Schmidheiny, Kurt, 2006. "Income segregation and local progressive taxation: Empirical evidence from Switzerland," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(3), pages 429-458, February.
    13. Revelli, Federico & Tovmo, Per, 2007. "Revealed yardstick competition: Local government efficiency patterns in Norway," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 121-134, July.
    14. Cain Polidano & Kostas Mavromaras, 2011. "Participation in and Completion of Vocational Education and Training for People with a Disability," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 44(2), pages 137-152, June.
    15. Beatrix Brügger & Rafael Lalive & Josef Zweimüller, 2009. "Does Culture Affect Unemployment? Evidence from the Röstigraben," CESifo Working Paper Series 2714, CESifo.
    16. Beatrix Eugster & Rafael Lalive & Andreas Steinhauer & Josef Zweimüller, 2011. "The Demand for Social Insurance: Does Culture Matter?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 121(556), pages 413-448, November.
    17. Charles F. Manski, 1993. "Identification of Endogenous Social Effects: The Reflection Problem," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 60(3), pages 531-542.
    18. Devereux, Michael P. & Griffith, Rachel, 1998. "Taxes and the location of production: evidence from a panel of US multinationals," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(3), pages 335-367, June.
    19. Hines, James R, Jr, 1996. "Altered States: Taxes and the Location of Foreign Direct Investment in America," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(5), pages 1076-1094, December.
    20. Jan K. Brueckner, 2003. "Strategic Interaction Among Governments: An Overview of Empirical Studies," International Regional Science Review, , vol. 26(2), pages 175-188, April.
    21. Besley, Timothy & Case, Anne, 1995. "Incumbent Behavior: Vote-Seeking, Tax-Setting, and Yardstick Competition," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(1), pages 25-45, March.
    22. Peter Riach & Judith Rich, 2004. "Fishing for Discrimination," Review of Social Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 62(4), pages 465-486.
    23. Keen, Michael, 2001. "Preferential Regimes Can Make Tax Competition Less Harmful," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 54(4), pages 757-762, December.
    24. Ravaud, Jean-François & Madiot, Béatrice & Ville, Isabelle, 1992. "Discrimination towards disabled people seeking employment," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 35(8), pages 951-958, October.
    25. Thompson, Jeffrey P. & Rohlin, Shawn M., 2012. "The Effect of Sales Taxes on Employment: New Evidence From Cross-Border Panel Data Analysis," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 65(4), pages 1023-1041, December.
    26. Roland Rathelot & Patrick Sillard, 2008. "The Importance of Local Corporate Taxes in Business Location Decisions: Evidence From French Micro Data," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(527), pages 499-514, March.
    27. Geys, Benny, 2006. "Looking across borders: A test of spatial policy interdependence using local government efficiency ratings," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(3), pages 443-462, November.
    28. Phelps, Edmund S, 1972. "The Statistical Theory of Racism and Sexism," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 62(4), pages 659-661, September.
    29. Brueckner, Jan K., 2000. "A Tiebout/tax-competition model," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(2), pages 285-306, August.
    30. Wilson, John Douglas, 1999. "Theories of Tax Competition," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 52(n. 2), pages 269-304, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Beatrix Eugster & Raphaël Parchet, 2019. "Culture and Taxes," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 127(1), pages 296-337.
    2. Agrawal, David R. & Trandel, Gregory A., 2019. "Dynamics of policy adoption with state dependence," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    3. Haufler, Andreas & Klemm, Alexander & Schjelderup, Guttorm, 2006. "Globalisation and the mix of wage and profit taxes," Discussion Papers in Economics 885, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    4. Sandy Fréret & Denis Maguain, 2017. "The effects of agglomeration on tax competition: evidence from a two-regime spatial panel model on French data," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 24(6), pages 1100-1140, December.
    5. Alexander Klemm & Stefan Parys, 2012. "Empirical evidence on the effects of tax incentives," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 19(3), pages 393-423, June.
    6. Revelli, Federico & Tovmo, Per, 2007. "Revealed yardstick competition: Local government efficiency patterns in Norway," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 121-134, July.
    7. Hernández-Murillo, Rubén, 2019. "Interjurisdictional competition with adverse selection," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 173(C), pages 85-95.
    8. Peter Egger & Horst Raff, 2015. "Tax rate and tax base competition for foreign direct investment," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 22(5), pages 777-810, October.
    9. Pantelis Kammas, 2011. "Strategic fiscal interaction among OECD countries," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 147(3), pages 459-480, June.
    10. Yu, Jihai & Zhou, Li-An & Zhu, Guozhong, 2016. "Strategic interaction in political competition: Evidence from spatial effects across Chinese cities," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 23-37.
    11. Lyytikäinen, Teemu, 2012. "Tax competition among local governments: Evidence from a property tax reform in Finland," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(7-8), pages 584-595.
    12. Yutao Han & Patrice Pieretti & Giuseppe Pulina, 2023. "The impact of tax and infrastructure competition on the profitability of local firms," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 30(2), pages 281-304, April.
    13. Federico Revelli, 2005. "On Spatial Public Finance Empirics," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 12(4), pages 475-492, August.
    14. Cassette, Aurélie & Paty, Sonia, 2008. "Tax competition among Eastern and Western European countries: With whom do countries compete?," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 32(4), pages 307-325, December.
    15. Raphael Parchet, 2012. "Are Local Tax Rates Strategic Complements or Substitutes?," ERSA conference papers ersa12p313, European Regional Science Association.
    16. Wang, Jian & Wu, Qun & Yan, Siqi & Guo, Guancheng & Peng, Shangui, 2020. "China’s local governments breaking the land use planning quota: A strategic interaction perspective," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    17. Benny Geys & Steffen Osterloh, 2013. "Borders As Boundaries To Fiscal Policy Interactions? An Empirical Analysis Of Politicians’ Opinions On Rivals In The Competition For Firms," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(4), pages 583-606, October.
    18. Lyytikäinen, Teemu, 2012. "Tax competition among local governments: Evidence from a property tax reform in Finland," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(7-8), pages 584-595.
    19. Peralta, Susana & Wauthy, Xavier & van Ypersele, Tanguy, 2006. "Should countries control international profit shifting?," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 24-37, January.
    20. Lisa Evers & Helen Miller & Christoph Spengel, 2015. "Intellectual property box regimes: effective tax rates and tax policy considerations," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 22(3), pages 502-530, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Tax competition; fiscal federalism; culture;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H31 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - Household
    • H71 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue
    • Z10 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:usg:econwp:2013:39. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vwasgch.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.