reaction or interaction spatial process identification in multi tiered government structures abstract this paper models horizontal and vertical fiscal externalities in a multi tiered structure of government and implements maximum likelihood and instrumental variables estimation techniques to identify the source of spatial dependence in english local government expenditures the results show that when vertical fiscal externalities among upper tier county authority and lower tier district authority expenditures are explicitly taken into account the estimated magnitude of inter district fiscal interactions is substantially reduced the observed positive spatial autocorrelation among district expenditures can consequently be attributed to a large extent to common reaction to county fiscal policies rather than to actual strategic interaction

what is the optimal immigration policy migration jobs and welfare abstract we study the immigration policy that maximizes the welfare of the native population in an economy where the government designs an optimal redistributive welfare system and supplies public goods we show that when the government can design different tax systems for immigrants and natives free immigration is optimal it is also optimal to use the tax system to encourage the immigration of high skill workers and discourage that of low skill workers when immigrants and natives must be treated alike banning low skill immigration and allowing free immigration for high skill workers is optimal however there might be no high skill immigration when heavy taxes are levied on all high skill workers both natives and immigrants

taxation and international migration of superstars evidence from the european football market we analyze the effects of top tax rates on international migration of football players in 14 european countries since 1985 both country case studies and multinomial regressions show evidence of strong mobility responses to tax rates with an elasticity of the number of foreign domestic players to the net of tax rate around one around 0 15 we also find evidence of sorting effects low taxes attract highability players who displace low ability players and displacement effects low taxes on foreigners displace domestic players those results can be rationalized in a simple model of migration and taxation with rigid labor demand jel f22 h24 h31 j44 j61 l83

regional tax competition evidence from french regions reulier e and rocaboy y regional tax competition evidence from french regions regional studies two mechanisms can lead to fiscal strategic interactions between local jurisdictions the first is due to the tax base mobility authorities use fiscal variables to attract new resources the second is related to information asymmetries between the politicians and the constituency to reduce these asymmetries voters can compare their fiscal situation with the one in neighbouring jurisdictions these two channels lead to what can be referred to as mobility led and information led tax competition this paper aims to discriminate between these two tax competition models in the case of the french regions the econometric tests suggest that when taxes are paid by voters the politicians in office seem to be involved in an information led tax competition while in the case of taxes paid by firms the mobility of the tax base seems to be the best way to explain strategic fiscal interactions reulier e et

the openness equality trade off in global redistribution the gulf cooperation council gcc countries accept massive numbers of migrants from poor countries and pay wages that dramatically improve over outside options but are meagre by the standards of natives as such they do dramatically more per capita to reduce global inequality than do the fortress welfare states of the organisation for economic cooperation and development oecd countries if oecd countries were to imitate the gcc it would reduce global inequality by more than full equalisation within the oecd would such examples suggest a philosophically disturbing trade off between openness to global inequality reducing migration and internal equality

how elastic are national corporate income tax bases in oecd countries the role of domestic and foreign tax rates abstract to what extent do reductions in corporate income tax cit rates attract foreign tax bases what are the revenue implications of a unilateral tax reduction when tax bases are internationally mobile these questions are explored using annual data from 17 oecd countries spanning the period 1982 to 2005 controlling for fixed country effects year effects and country time trends and subjecting our results to an extensive robustness analysis we find i a country s aggregate reported corporate profits are negatively and significantly affected by cit rate reductions in neighbouring countries ii a unilateral reduction in the domestic cit rate results in lower domestic cit revenues

a spatial analysis of provincial corporate income tax responses evidence from canada using a model of interdependent tax choices and accounting for equalization entitlements and general transfers this paper estimates making use of a spatial econometric framework corporate income tax setting functions for all canadian provincial governments the results show that there is a statistically significant positive fiscal interaction among a subset of provinces and between all provinces and the federal government provincial corporate income taxes are also found to be negatively related to equalization entitlements general federal transfers and the federal corporate income tax a robustness check on the fiscal relationship between ontario and quebec verifies the existence of significant bi directional fiscal interdependencies the paper also introduces u s state corporate income taxes as covariates and examines their interaction with canadian provinces a l aide d un modele de choix fiscaux interdependants et en tenant compte des paiements de perequation et des transferts generaux ce texte calibre a l aide d un cadre econometrique spatial les fonctions de definition de fiscalite des revenus de societes de tous les gouvernements provinciaux canadiens les resultats montrent qu il y a un effet d interaction positif significatif entre un sous ensemble de provinces et entre les provinces dans leur ensemble et le gouvernement federal les impots sur le revenu des societes des provinces sont co relies negativement avec les paiements de perequation les transferts generaux et l impot federal sur le revenu des societes des tests de robustesse montrent qu il y a relation d interdependance fiscale bidirectionnelle significative entre le quebec et l ontario le memoire introduit les impots sur le revenu des societes aux etats unis comme co variables et examine leur interaction avec ce qui se passe dans les provinces canadiennes

relativity mobility and optimal nonlinear income taxation in an open economy abstract recent evidence suggests that globalization has reduced the barriers to international labor mobility and induced more cross country social comparisons in an open economy with tax driven migration and consumption externalities relativity we derive an optimal tax formula that subsumes existing ones obtained under a maximin social objective and additively separable utility and sign the second best mirrleesian marginal tax rates for all skill levels we establish the thresholds of the elasticity and level of migration to determine when relativity and inequality act as complements or substitutes in shaping the optimal top tax rate under both nash and stackelberg tax competition if the migration probability of top income workers is approximately 50 numerical calculation using parameter estimates from empirical studies shows that the country with labor inflow outflow implements over 10 lower higher marginal tax rates than suggested by the autarky equilibrium of kanbur and tuomala 2013

the impressive contribution of canadian economists to fiscal federalism theory and policy the study of fiscal federalism has been central to the research of canadian economists since the rowell sirois report to mark the 50th anniversary of the founding of the canadian economics association it is fitting to take stock of their contributions we focus on the period since 1982 and emphasize the main scholarly publications of an inclusive array of canadian economists and economists in canadian universities our attention is devoted to applications in the context of federal and provincial governments setting aside related issues in municipal government finance we briefly discuss instances where the fiscal federalism literature has informed policy debates including through policy research institutes government commissions and international organizations la contribution impressionnante des economistes canadiens a la theorie et a la politique du federalisme fiscal l etude du federalisme fiscal a ete un element central de la recherche des economistes canadiens depuis la commission rowell sirois au moment de celebrer le 50eme anniversaire de la fondation de l association canadienne d economique le moment est approprie pour prendre la mesure de leurs contributions on se concentre sur la periode apres 1982 et on souligne les principales publications savantes d un ensemble inclusif d economistes canadiens et d economistes dans les universites canadiennes une attention particuliere est portee aux applications dans le contexte federal et provincial mettant de cote les enjeux relies a la finance municipale on discute brievement des instances ou la litterature sur le federalisme fiscal a eclaire les debats de politiques publiques y compris a travers les instituts de recherche sur les politiques publiques les commissions gouvernementales et les organisations internationales

the influence of gender on faculty salaries in the united states 1969 89 this study estimates the earnings differential between the male and female faculty in the united states over a period of two decades 1969 1989 five micro level data sets are used for this purpose a modified version of the widely used oaxaca model is used in the estimations it is found that the racial earnings gap narrowed considerably more than did the gender earnings differential over this period a higher male female earnings gap at the professor level relative to junior ranks suggests that relatively recent entrants in the academic labour market face a less discriminatory environment than did their predecessors a controversial finding is that the discriminatory component of the earnings differential between male and female faculty fell between 1969 and 1984 but rose thereafter

strategic fiscal interaction among oecd countries this paper investigates whether oecd countries compete with each other for mobile factors by using various fiscal tax spending policy instruments we use a panel dataset of 20 oecd countries over the 1982 2000 period results reveal evidence that international capital inflows fdi are affected by fiscal policy at home and abroad also there is evidence that domestic capital tax rates react i positively to changes in capital tax rates in neighboring countries and ii negatively to changes in public investment spending in neighboring countries in contrast strategic interdependence over public investment spending decisions is not established

asymmetric tax competition abstract the paper analyzes nash equilibrium when two jurisdictions set tax rates on a tax base which is mobile between them population differences imply tax differences the smaller jurisdiction levies a lower tax rate in equilibrium and its residents are better off than those in the larger jurisdiction the nash equilibrium is inefficient if the two jurisdictions merged the resulting allocation would be efficient however if differences in population are great enough residents of the small jurisdiction would be made worse off by such a merger

meritocracy egalitarianism and the stability of majoritarian organizations we gratefully acknowledge support from the severo ochoa programme for centres of excellence in r d sev 2011 0075 barbera and bevia acknowledge support from grants consolidated group c eco2008 04756 and feder and sgr2014 515 ponsati acknowledges support from grants eco2012 37065 and sgr2009 1142

strategic fiscal interaction across borders evidence from french and german local governments along the rhine valley abstract this article contributes to the literature on local tax interactions its novelty lies in its focus on the interactions of local governments across national borders we use panel data for the french and german municipalities in the rhine valley for the period 2000 2007 the local governments of each country influence firms overall tax burdens but the tax instruments available at the local level differ we estimate panel models that distinguish between the effects of competing municipalities belonging to the same country and belonging to the other country our empirical model shows that local jurisdictions along borders choose their business tax rates based on those of their domestic neighbors and that foreign fiscal policy does not have an impact on the local domestic tax setting behavior in these contexts

decentralized redistribution in a laboratory federation abstract the idea of laboratory federalism provides a strong argument in favor of fiscal decentralization it views autonomous jurisdictions in a federation as laboratories where new policies can be tested at low risk for the entire system if successful these policies will spread out by imitation otherwise they will be discarded studying this idea in a dynamic setting of fiscal competition we show that due to externalities between jurisdictions policies that appear successful and are therefore mimicked do not necessarily enhance welfare and vice versa specifically in the classical framework of decentralized rich to poor income redistribution with labor mobility the long run outcome entails a complete breakdown of redistribution with zero subsidies to the poor everywhere

do countries compensate firms for international wage differentials we address the role of labor cost differentials for national tax policies modeling a tax competition race between two countries competing for a population of mobile firms we show that in equilibrium the high wage country charges a lower tax than the low wage country moreover under tax competition the high wage country attracts more firms than in a setting without taxation exploiting exogenous variation in labor cost differentials induced by the breakdown of communism in eastern europe we find that tax policies are in line with the model prediction our most conservative estimates suggest that a one dollar increase in the compensation cost differential in prices as of 2000 triggers a cut of the statutory corporate income tax rate by about one percentage point

a voluntary brain drain tax abstract a major roadblock to the implementation of bhagwati s proposal to allow developing countries to tax skilled emigrants residing in developed countries the brain drain is the administrative problems associated with collecting this tax in the absence of developed country cooperation this paper provides a partial solution to these problems involving the tax treatment of emigrants who return to their countries of origin the tax system is structured so that returning emigrants who previously paid the brain drain tax face lower tax payments than those who evaded the brain drain tax given the expected value of this tax benefit emigrants are willing to pay the brain drain tax in the basic model a source country s optimal tax system includes this brain drain tax and does not distort migration decisions

sex discrimination in faculty salaries evidence from a historically women s university during the past several years a number of studies have appeared in this review and elsewhere examining the earnings and promotion of women faculty a finding common to most of these studies is that the female male salary differential is smallest at entry level but widens over time 2 indeed george johnson and frank stafford state after presenting such evidence for michigan state university we believe this qualitative result would be observed for any university in the united states for which the sample size is sufficiently large 1974 p 899 while the qualitative findings of faculty salary studies have been similar interpretations have differed on the one hand the human capital view attributes the widening sex differential or flatter female earnings profile to differences in acquired skill and productivity this literature emphasizes differences in continuous labor market experience hours of work and the relative teaching research division of labor on the other hand the discrimination view attributes the widening differential to increased labor market discrimination with respect to experience the sex differential is smallest at entry level where universities must compete and pay prevailing salaries to attract incoming faculty members however discrimination is more easily exercised in the internal university labor market by male faculty and administrators as job mobility lessens with age because of fixed costs tied moves 3 university specific job training a shorter benefit span etc the strongest evidence supporting the discrimination view is the existence of significant unexplained salary differentials even where detailed data exist on research and teaching performance the purpose of this note is to examine the salary structure at a large university which was historically the state s university for women but is now fully coeducational to our knowledge no other such study is available comparison of results from such a study with those already in the literature can shed light on the interpretation of salary differential studies we find somewhat surprisingly an exception to the finding by johnson and stafford and others of a widening femalemale salary differential with experience apart from some qualifications discussed below we find a small differential at entry but little difference in the reward structure to men and women with respect to experience ceteris paribus alternative interpretations of this evidence are provided while we cannot clearly test between the human capital and discrimination explanations for salary differentials our evidence strongly suggests that universities can and do exercise significant discretion in the awarding of salaries discretion which is presumably made possible by the not for profit nature of these institutions see armen alchian and reuben kessel section i briefly describes the data source while section ii examines specification and then tests for functional form section iii university of north carolina greensboro we thank terry g seaks and frank stafford for helpful suggestions we are equally responsible for the contents of the paper a partial list includes george johnson and frank stafford with later comments by steven farber and by myra strober and alice quester nancy gordon thomas morton and ina braden emily hoffman david katz marianne ferber and jane loeb ferber and betty kordick ferber loeb and helen lowry and james koch and john chizmar 2 there is debate over whether the differential begins to narrow late during the working life as argued by johnson and stafford see johnson and stafford 1977 and ferber loeb and lowry 3viewing mobility within a household context see jacob mincer the potential for discrimination against married women faculty may be higher than with male or unmarried female faculty

migration and optimal income taxes abstract the issue addressed in this paper is the optimal taxation of incomes earned in the home economy and of incomes earned abroad when people can migrate as a preliminary the optimal taxation of home incomes when there is migration and no taxation of foreign incomes is discussed then in a more general setting we deal with optimal taxation of different kinds of labour when another kind of labour is not taxable and show how this bears on the taxation of foreign incomes the last sections of the paper analyse a simple model in which people choose between taxable labour at home taxable labour abroad and untaxable labour a condition is found implying that the optimal tax on foreign income is higher than on the home income of a person of equal utility

sustainability of energy production and use in iran abstract the issue of oil and gas policies in iran is rather complex in the present investigation it is aimed to formulate plans for increasing the capacity of the country s energy production analysis of energy consumption pattern over last decades is indicative of inefficient usage the low energy prices in iran do not reflect economic costs further distortions exist in the tariff structures of most energy sources and in their relative prices it is recognized that price reform is a key policy element for promotion of energy conservation and fuel substitution with renewable energies mitigation policies in the energy sector are crucial to iran s overall policies emission of greenhouse gases can be reduced from 752 156 to 560 791 gg co 2 equivalents in 2010 by implementing the policies proposed for the energy sub sectors enhancing energy efficiency including combined cycle power generation has proved to be the most economic option for greenhouse gases reduction in energy sector iran s energy consumption pattern is unsustainable and consumption oriented

eco efficiency change in power plants using a slacks based measure for the meta frontier malmquist luenberger productivity index abstract malmquist luenberger index is a popular index deployed for evaluating eco efficiency and productivity change over a certain period when both desirable and undesirable factors are jointly produced in some production processes however conventional data envelopment analysis dea models used for computing this index are unable to distinguish the various technologies employed by the decision making units when heterogeneity exists in the technology the meta frontier malmquist luenberger approach is adopted to evaluate eco efficiency and productivity change over a period when undesirable outputs are incorporated in the analysis of efficiency in this paper a new slacks based dea measure is developed and used to compute the meta frontier malmquist luenberger productivity index this approach is then deployed to evaluate 48 iranian thermal power plants productivity change in three different categories steam gas and combined cycle over an eight year period of restructuring in the power industry this technique enables the calculation of eco efficiency change of thermal power plants operating under different technologies as well as the technology gap ratios and measures the extent to which the efficiency frontiers of individual categories of power plants deviate from the meta frontier the results reveal that the last years of the restructuring period saw a greater rate of productivity growth compared to the initial years and evidence of significant eco efficiency improvements over the period in all the three types of the thermal power plants finally it is expected that the findings in this study aid policy makers and power industry regulators in developing sustainable energy policies towards environmental protection and planning power plant operations

on the decomposition of wage differentials the often used method for decomposing wage differentials into human capital and discrimination components is reformulated so that both t he disadvantage or cost discrimination it imposes on a black or minority wage earner and the advantage or benefit it bestows on a white or majority wage earner can be estimated copyright 1988 by mit press

does fiscal decentralization constrain leviathan new evidence from local property tax competition this paper reexamines whether fiscal decentralization constrains leviathan government using panel data for pennsylvania we compare actual property tax rates to the leviathan revenue maximizing rates for municipalities school districts and counties using spatial econometric methods we also estimate the degree of spatial dependence at the three levels of local government we find that fiscal decentralization results in stronger intergovernmental competition and lower tax rates we also find evidence of collusion among school districts that exhibit high interdependence but also high tax rates this calls into question the current literature s blind use of spatial dependence as a measure of intergovernmental competition

spatial competition between jurisdictions which tax perfectly competitive retail or production centers abstract this paper examines the taxes that jurisdictions choose to impose on perfectly competitive retail centers or production centers within their boundaries retail centers are located on a line and jurisdictions are segments of the line a jurisdiction maximizes the sum of tax revenues and residents consumer surplus the tax chosen by a jurisdiction is a function of the spacing between retail centers the locations of interjurisdictional boundaries and the taxes imposed by neighboring jurisdictions an exporting jurisdiction chooses a positive tax an importing jurisdiction chooses a zero tax even if neighboring jurisdictions have taxes or subsidies if all jurisdictions with retail centers use endogenous fiscal policy then each imposes a positive or zero tax

from theory to practice canadian economists contributions to public finance we survey canadian economists contributions to the field of public finance from the mid 1980s to 2016 we highlight the development and extension of the models and tools of public economics and the empirical studies that have deepened our understanding of the efficiency and distributional issues over a wide range of public finance issues we also highlight contributions to the development of policies through commissioned reports and the important role that canadian institutions the canadian tax foundation the think tanks and the federal and provincial departments of finance have played in shaping tax and fiscal policies de la theorie a la pratique contributions des economistes canadiens a la finance publique on examine les contributions des economistes canadiens au domaine de la finance publique du milieu des annees 1980 a 2016 on souligne le developpement et l extension des modeles et des outils d economie publique et les etudes empiriques qui ont aide a approfondir notre comprehension des enjeux d efficacite et de distribution dans un vaste eventail de questions de finance publique on souligne aussi les contributions des rapports commandites au developpement de politiques publiques ainsi que le role important d institutions canadiennes l association canadienne d etudes fiscales les groupes d experts ainsi que les ministeres des finances du gouvernement federal et des gouvernements provinciaux dans le design des politiques fiscales

optimal taxation under regional inequality abstract we study how regional productivity differences and labor mobility shape optimal mirrleesian tax transfer schemes when tax schedules are not allowed to differ across regions productivity enhancing inter regional migration exerts a downward pressure on optimal marginal tax rates when regionally differentiated taxation is allowed marginal tax rates in high low productivity regions should be corrected downwards upwards relative to the benchmark without migration simulations of the productivity differences between metropolitan and other areas of the us indicate that migration affects the optimal tax transfer schedule more strongly in the regionally differentiated rather than in the undifferentiated case

budget spillovers and fiscal policy interdependence evidence from the states abstract this paper formalizes and tests the notion that states expenditures depend on the spending of similarly situated states we find that even after allowing for fixed state effects year effects and common random shocks among neighbors a state government s level of per capita expenditure is positively and significantly affected by the expenditure levels of its neighbors ceteris paribus a one dollar increase in a state s neighbors expenditures increases its own expenditure by over 70 cents

a general equilibrium model of guest worker migration the source country perspective abstract this paper examines the problem of guest worker migration from an economy populated by identical utility maximizing individuals with finite working lives the decision to migrate the rate of saving while abroad as well as the length of a migrant s stay in the foreign country are all viewed as part of a solution to an intertemporal optimization problem in addition to studying the microeconomic aspects of temporary migration the paper analyses the determinants of the equilibrium flow of migrants the corresponding domestic wage and the level of welfare enjoyed by a typical worker effects of an emigration tax are also investigated

diagnosis murder the death of state death taxes since 1976 more than 30 states have eliminated their death taxes and many others have reduced them this unexplored case of interstate tax competition presents a unique opportunity to develop a new more satisfying definition of competitor based on historical elderly migration patterns using data from 1967 onward we outline the recent history of state death tax competition and present a spatial econometric analysis interstate tax competition is evident and grows stronger when using migration based definitions of competitors the article concludes with still more evidence of interstate tax competition the recent movement by states to effectively revive their death taxes jel h7 d7 i introduction the federal estate tax has received wide attention especially because its elimination has been a centerpiece of president george w bush s tax proposals 1 largely overlooked however is the quiet revolution that has been taking place at the state level since 1976 31 of the 48 contiguous states have repealed their death or estate inheritance and gift eig taxes instead relying only on the pick up tax whereby states capture a portion of the federal estate tax liability but do not increase the overall liability of the estate 2 of the remaining 12 states that still have eig taxes 2 have enacted legislation that will eliminate them by 2005 and others are considering doing so beyond the outright elimination of eig taxes many states have also acted to reduce them in a variety of ways such as exempting certain beneficiaries such as the spouse this trend is noteworthy for several reasons foremost it appears to us a prime example of intense interstate tax competition due to the growing size and political influence of the elderly population there is additional political pressure because states may worry that high eig taxes will drive the high income elderly to move to bordering states or retirement havens the stakes may be substantial for example longino and crown 1989 estimate that florida had a net gain of 5 billion in income from the elderly migrants it received between 1985 and 1990 and sastry 1992 73 estimates that one new job is created for every 2 5 elderly migrants it receives state eig tax competition also provides us with a unique opportunity to explore alternative definitions of competitor states beyond simple geography because the movements of the tax base the elderly are fairly easy to track via historical migration data yet no research to our knowledge has explored interstate eig tax competition furthermore these widespread changes in state eig taxes provide substantial cross sectional and time series variation that has been mostly overlooked by researchers interested in the behavioral effects of estate taxes 3 state eig tax policy is also still in flux current and proposed changes in the federal estate tax have substantial revenue consequences for states effectively eliminating eig tax revenues for those that rely solely on the pick up tax how will the states react to this change at present several states have enacted or are considering legislation that would effectively decouple their eig taxes from the federal estate tax and so would preserve the revenue source indeed as the federal estate tax is slowly eliminated eig taxes in states that continue to use them may be the only remaining taxes on bequests yet little is known about them our research seeks to fill this void using state level data from 1967 to the present we first describe the brief history and geographical pattern of these widespread reductions in state eig taxes to our knowledge ours is the first research to document in a systematic way this phenomenon we begin with a chronology of the states that eliminated completely their eig taxes thereby choosing to rely instead only on the pick up tax however there are many other ways that the states may reduce their eig taxes such as increasing exemptions or reducing tax rates

gender and racial earnings differentials in academic labor markets this study estimates earnings differentials across racial and gender groups among college faculty and decomposes these differentials into the components attributable to differences in individual and institutional characteristics and that which remains unexplained we find that white females earn approximately 4 percent less than white males black males earn 7 4 percent more black females earn one percent more hispanic males earn 2 7 percent more hispanic females earn 1 7 percent less and asian males earn 7 7 percent more than comparable white males we also find a significant earnings penalty for being a naturalized citizen or noncitizen versus an u s born citizen

the influence of taxes on migration evidence from switzerland empirical studies on the impact of taxation on migration have been limited by a lack of comparable data in an international context and a lack of variation in tax burdens within countries a notable exception to the latter is switzerland prior empirical studies on tax competition in switzerland have had to rely on aggregated data in general these studies have been supportive of the notion of tax competition i e high earners tend to relocate to low tax regions the authors use an alternative panel approach based on micro data from the first three waves of the newly established swiss household panel despite active community tax policies aimed at attracting new residents and a significant increase in tax burden dispersion among communities in the past decade no tax induced migration is observed migration decisions are found to be strongly influenced by accommodation related factors that point to important housing market effects

employers discriminatory behavior and the estimation of wage discrimination this paper considers the linkage of empirical estimates of wage discrimination between two groups introduced by oaxaca 1973 to a theoretical model of employers discriminatory behavior it is shown that conditional on different assumptions about employers discriminatory tastes oaxaca s estimators of wage discrimination can be derived that the approach is more generally useful is demonstrated by deriving an alternative estimator of wage discrimination based on the assumption that within each type of labor e g unskilled skilled the utility function capturing employers discriminatory tastes is homogeneous of degree zero with respect to labor inputs from each of the two groups the estimators are compared empirically in an application to male female wage differentials

tax and the city a theory of local tax competition abstract in this paper we propose a novel theoretical model of tax competition at the local level large jurisdictions cities compete both locally with smaller neighbouring communities and interregionally with more distant cities while small jurisdictions hinterlands compete only with other jurisdictions in their neighbourhood the model structure is motivated by recent empirical findings as well as survey results among german mayors the perceived intensity of competition for firms varies considerably between jurisdictions and can mainly be explained by the size and location of the jurisdiction our model predicts contrary to earlier findings for competition between countries or regions that capital taxes of large jurisdictions fall more strongly with increasing interregional competition and may eventually lead to smaller taxes than in small jurisdictions hinterlands are therefore less affected from globalisation than cities we contrast our results with a standard tax competition model in which all jurisdictions compete with all other jurisdictions

incumbent behavior vote seeking tax setting and yardstick competition this paper develops a model of the political economy of tax setting in a multijurisdictional world where voters choices and incumbent behavior are determined simultaneously voters are assumed to make comparisons between jurisdictions to overcome political agency problems this forces incumbents into a yardstick competition in which they care about what other incumbents are doing we provide a theoretical framework and empirical evidence using u s state data from 1960 to 1988 the results are encouraging to the view that vote seeking and tax setting are tied together through the nexus of yardstick competition

voluntary income redistribution with migration abstract this paper examines theoretically the welfare magnet problem brought about by income redistribution in a small area where disparities across jurisdictions in transfer policies may induce both recipient and resource migration we show that the level of redistribution determined by majority rule may either rise or decline as household mobility increases and that this level will be either higher or lower than the efficient level to an extent that depends on local market conditions the social value of migrants and the mobility of both the rich and the poor in particular an economy may benefit from the immigration of transfer recipients we also derive the form of an efficient community specific subsidy to transfers which in some cases will be negative

games the states don t play welfare benefits and the theory of fiscal federalism fiscal federalism theory predicts that states will behave strategically in welfare programs because voter demand for welfare is sensitive to tax price while the tax price itself changes because of welfare induced migration this paper tests these propositions on afdc in the united states for a panel from 1982 88 using new models for the determination of the recipiency ratio the tax price and composite neighbors the data do not support any substantial tax price elasticity of demand for welfare estimates of migration effects on tax price are found to be sensitive to specification copyright 1995 by mit press

strategic nonlinear income tax competition with perfect labor mobility abstract tax competition between two governments who choose nonlinear income tax schedules to maximize the average utility of their residents when skills are unobservable and labor is perfectly mobile is examined we show that there are no equilibria in which there is a skill type that pays positive taxes to one country and whose utility is larger than the average utility in the other country or in which the lowest skilled are subsidized we also show that it is possible for the most highly skilled to receive a net transfer funded by taxes on lower skilled individuals in equilibrium these findings confirm the race to the bottom thesis in this setting

tax policy in the presence of emigration recent policy and theoretical discussions of the effects of highly skilled migration from the underdeveloped countries the so called brain drain have focused on a proposal bhagwati 1972 to levy a supplementary income tax on those who migrate the proceeds of such a tax to be transmitted to the developing country of origin or to developing countries en bloc for developmental spending the welfare implications of such a tax were analyzed in an earlier paper of ours bhagwati and hamada 1974 in the context of a model of the country of emigration characterized by sticky wages and harrisstodaro 1971 type of unemployment in subsequent papers the tax has been analyzed also in the context of modified models still incorporating the unemployment phenomena by rodriguez 1975 and mcculloch yellen 1975 2 essentially these models analyze the impact of the income tax on emigrants incomes as arising primarily through the reduced differential

on the choice between capital and labour mobility trade theorists since the pioneering work of kemp 1966 have considered the question of national advantage from international factor mobility by considering only one factor to be so mobile kemp analyzed elegantly the question of optimal policies in 2 x 2 x 2 model and showed that since monopoly power could exist in both the goods and factor markets in consequence of international capital mobility the optimal policy intervention would generally involve two policy instruments tariffs cum subsidies on goods and duties cum subsidies on international capital flows jones 1967 subsequently extended kemp s argument to the secondbest context by examining the optimal level of one of these instruments when the other was arbitrarily set at zero elsewhere in this issue brecher 1983 shows in an elegant and original contribution that the jones policy problem is in fact a third best rather than a second best problem as generally believed and that if only one of the tariff and capital mobility taxes cumsubsidies can be used it is generally possible to improve welfare further by admitting an altogether different domestic policy instrument namely a production or consumption tax cum subsidy as the case may be the research of bhagwati was supported by the german marshall fund grant no l 34015 the problem analyzed in the paper was posed in bhagwati 1979 and an early ingenious and neglected analysis in ramaswami 1968 was noted by bhagwati we have profited greatly from these contributions also from reading webb 1970 ramaswami 1970 and a recent paper of calvo and wellisz 1983 on this problem this result is in consonance with the results of bhagwati ramaswami and srinivasan 1969 for the case without international capital mobility but the consonance is intuitive only after the result was established for the case with international capital mobility

millionaire migration and taxation of the elite evidence from administrative data a growing number of u s states have adopted millionaire taxes on top income earners this increases the progressivity of state tax systems but it raises concerns about tax flight elites migrating from high tax to low tax states draining state revenues and undermining redistributive social policies are top income earners transitory millionaires searching for lower tax places to live or are they embedded elites who are reluctant to migrate away from places where they have been highly successful this question is central to understanding the social consequences of progressive taxation we draw on administrative tax returns for all million dollar income earners in the united states over 13 years tracking the states from which millionaires file their taxes our dataset contains 45 million tax records and provides census scale panel data on top income earners we advance two core analyses 1 state to state migration of millionaires over the long term and 2 a sharply focused discontinuity anal

income redistribution in open economies i propose a model of income redistribution in an open economy environment the world consists of a finite number of countries whose governments seek to maximize the welfare of their low skilled populations by taxing skilled workers labor income while tax competition limits the extent to which redistribution is possible as compared to the closed economy outcome when skilled people are internationally mobile i argue that race to the bottom does not necessarily occur even if the number of countries becomes arbitrarily large the asymptotic sustainability of the welfare state crucially depends on the statistical properties of the probability distribution of skilled people s location preferences

nash equilibria in models of fiscal competition abstract this paper analyzes nash equilibria in a simple model of an economy with jurisdictions engaging in fiscal competition small number nash equilibria in which tax rates are the strategic variables are shown not to coincide with nash equilibria in which public expenditure levels are the strategic variables

an empirical analysis of intergovernmental tax interaction the case of business income taxes in canada both federal and provincial governments in canada levy corporate taxes on busi nesses in their jurisdictions which potentially gives rise to horizontal and vertical tax exter nalities within the federation using a simple model of interdependent tax choices we estimate tax setting functions for the federal government ontario quebec and an aggregate of the remaining eight provinces we find evidence of significant vertical and horizontal tax inter actions provincial tax rates respond negatively to the federal tax rate while at least some provinces increase their tax rates in response to increases in the tax rates of other provinces

bootstrapping statistical inferences of decomposition methods for gender earnings differentials applying the standard bootstrapping technique with corrections for heteroskedasticity for a sample of the 1997 urban household survey in china the present article attempts to test 1 whether the commonly used decomposition methods for gender earnings differentials give significantly different results and 2 whether the explained component is significantly different from the unexplained component which is commonly referred to as discrimination within each decomposition method based on a national data set the empirical results indicated some significant differences in both tests the implication of the results is that the proposed bootstrapping technique can be regarded as a guideline on applying which approach to decompose gender earnings differentials among different methods without losing important information and on evaluating the relative importance of the decomposition components for any chosen method

taxation and the international mobility of inventors we study the eect of top tax rates on superstar inventors international mobility since 1977 using panel data on inventors from the u s and european patent oces we exploit the dierential impact of changes in top tax rates on inventors of dierent qualities superstar inventors location choices are signicantly aected by top tax rates in our preferred specication the elasticity to the net of tax rate of the number of domestic superstar inventors is around 0 03 while that of foreign superstar inventors is around 1 these elasticities are larger for inventors in multinational companies an inventor is less sensitive to taxes in a country if his company performs a higher share of its research there

tax induced mobility evidence from a foreigners tax scheme in switzerland abstract we study location choice and residential mobility responses to local income taxes exploiting a special tax regime which applies to foreign employees residing in switzerland the institutional setting used generates a deterministic duration threshold at 5 years of stay in the country at which the local tax rates an individual faces simultaneously change in all municipalities we exploit this exogenous variation by applying a fuzzy regression discontinuity design to merged survey and administrative individual level data a dynamic location choice model allows us to derive testable hypotheses of individuals location choices and mobility decisions our estimated treatment effects provide causal evidence for tax induced residential choices and tax induced intra national mobility

the determinants of municipal tax rates in british columbia in this paper we study the regional pattern of municipal business property tax rates in the province of british columbia reduced form tax setting equations produce some evidence that municipal governments respond to tax changes in neighbouring jurisdictions a joint investigation of the determinants of tax base and municipal taxation decisions however reveals that it is difficult to interpret this response as arising primarily out of competition over tax base there is also some evidence that municipal tax rates are sensitive to taxes set on the same base by super municipal bodies jel classification c33 h71 les determinants des taux d imposition municipale en colombie britannique dans ce memoire les auteurs etudient le pattern regional des taux d imposition municipale sur la propriete fonciere commerciale dans la province de la colombie britannique on montre a l aide d un modele en forme reduite d equations de definition des taux d imposition que les gouvernements municipaux reagissent aux changements dans les taux d imposition dans leur voisinage cependant un examen conjoint des determinants de la base d imposition et des decisions municipales montre qu il est difficile d interpreter cette reaction comme emanant d une concurrence fiscale on montre aussi que les taux d imposition municipale sont sensibles aux niveaux de fiscalite imposes sur la meme base par les autorites supra municipales

power industry restructuring and eco efficiency changes a new slacks based model in malmquist luenberger index measurement measuring variations in efficiency and its extension eco efficiency during a restructuring period in different industries has always been a point of interest for regulators and policy makers this paper assesses the impacts of restructuring of procurement in the iranian power industry on the performance of power plants we introduce a new slacks based model for malmquist luenberger ml index measurement and apply it to the power plants to calculate the efficiency eco efficiency and technological changes over the 8 year period 2003 2010 of restructuring in the power industry the results reveal that although the restructuring had different effects on the individual power plants the overall growth in the eco efficiency of the sector was mainly due to advances in pure technology we also assess the correlation between efficiency and eco efficiency of the power plants which indicates a close relationship between these two steps thus lending support to the incorporation of environmental factors in efficiency analysis

horizontal and vertical indirect tax competition theory and some evidence from the usa this paper provides a simple theoretical framework for analysing simultaneous vertical and horizontal competition in excise taxes and estimates equations informed by the theory on a panel of us state and federal excise taxes on cigarettes and gasoline we also examine the role played by smuggling the results are generally consistent with the theory when the characteristics of the markets for the goods are taken into account for neither good do federal excise taxes affect state taxes taxes in neighbouring states have a significant and large effect in the case of cigarettes and a much weaker effect in the case of gasoline we also find that in the setting of cigarette taxes concerns about cross border shopping play a more important role than concerns about smuggling

brain drain taxes for non benevolent governments abstract this paper investigates the welfare effects of brain drain taxes levied by non benevolent governments whereby a country collects a tax from skilled emigrants but potentially wastes a sizable portion of the revenue using a model in which taxes are chosen to maximize expected political rents i show that the availability of a brain drain tax increases a weighted sum of citizen utilities however the government s optimal brain drain tax is found to be higher than the level that maximizes this weighted sum in another model a brain drain tax is found to be desirable when governments use public good expenditures to compete for mobile residents

expenditure spillovers and fiscal interactions empirical evidence from local governments in spain abstract the paper presents a framework for measuring spillovers resulting from local expenditure policies we identify and test for two different types of expenditure spillovers i benefit spillovers arising from the provision of local public goods and ii crowding spillovers arising from the crowding of facilities by residents in neighboring jurisdictions benefit spillovers are accounted for by assuming that the representative resident enjoys the consumption of a local public good in both his own community and in those surrounding it crowding spillovers are included by considering that a locality s consumption level is influenced by the population living in the surrounding localities we estimate a reaction function with interactions between local governments occurring not only between expenditure levels but also between neighbors populations and expenditures the equation is estimated using data on more than 2500 spanish local governments for the year 1999 the results show that both types of spillovers are relevant

optimal income tax under the threat of migration by top income earners we examine how allowing individuals to emigrate to pay lower taxes changes the optimal nonlinear income tax scheme in a mirrleesian economy an individual emigrates if his domestic utility is less than his utility abroad net of migration costs utilities and costs both depending on productivity a simple formula that complements saez s formula obtained in closed economy is derived for the marginal tax rates faced by top income earners it depends on the labour elasticity the tax rate abroad and the migration costs expressed as a fraction of the utility obtained abroad the rawlsian marginal tax rates obtained for the whole population illustrate a curse of the middle skilled simulations are provided for the french economy

do countries compete over corporate tax rates this paper tests whether oecd countries compete with each other over corporate taxes in order to attract investment we develop two models with firm mobility countries compete only over the statutory tax rate or the effective average tax rate while with capital mobility countries compete only over the effective marginal tax rate we estimate the parameters of reaction functions using data from 21 countries between 1983 99 we find evidence that countries compete over all three measures but particularly over the statutory tax rate and the effective average tax rate this is consistent with a belief amongst governments that location choices by multinational firms are discrete we also find evidence of concave reaction functions consistent with the model outlined in the paper

how do local governments decide on public policy in fiscal federalism tax vs expenditure optimization previous literature widely assumes that taxes are optimized in local public flnance while expenditures adjust residually this paper endogenizes the choice of the optimization variable in particular it analyzes how federal policy toward local governments in uences the way local governments decide on public policy unlike the presumption the paper shows that local governments may choose to optimize over expenditures the result most notably prevails when federal policy subsidizes local flscal efiort the results ofier a new perspective of the e ciency implications of federal policy toward local governments and thereby enable a more precise characterization of local government behavior in flscal federalism

the optimal distribution of population across cities abstract we develop an urban model that incorporates 1 heterogeneous sites 2 fiscal and urban externalities and 3 an endogenous number of cities i e the extensive margin of urban development within and across city decreasing returns to scale cause agents to perceive their city as being too large in the socially optimal allocation as a consequence in equilibrium the largest cities on the most amenable sites are undersized whereas the smaller cities on less amenable sites are oversized we propose a test for optimal city size with heterogeneous sites extending the henry george theorem

tax differentials in intraregional firm location evidence from new manufacturing establishments in spanish municipalities jofre monseny j and sole olle a tax differentials in intraregional firm location evidence from new manufacturing establishments in spanish municipalities regional studies this paper analyses empirically how differences in local taxes affect the intraregional location of new manufacturing plants these effects are examined within the random profit maximization framework it looks at the location decision of more than 10 000 manufacturing establishments locating between 1996 and 2003 across more than 400 municipalities in catalonia a spanish region it is found that local taxes on business and property deter new manufacturing establishments it is necessary to restrict the choice set to the local labour market and above all to control for agglomeration economies to identify the effects of taxes on the location of new establishments jofre monseny j et sole olle a les ecarts dans les taux d imposition et la localisation intra regionale des entreprises des preuves provenant des nouveaux etablisseme

public spending interactions and local politics empirical evidence from french municipalities this paper aims at testing whether there exist spending interactions between french municipalities by estimating a dynamic panel data model our results suggest that there are some interactions between neighbouring municipalities as regards primary and investment expenditures a positive relationship between municipalities wage bill and un employment rates is likely to stress a rise of temporary employment in those municipalities that suffer from social troubles further the estimation results show that these interdepen dences also exist between cities whose mayors have the same partisan affiliation finally our results confirm the opportunistic behaviour of local governments which increase all categories of public spending in pre electoral periods

tax competition as a cause of falling corporate income tax rates a survey of empirical literature since the mid 1980s tax rates on corporate income have declined in most industrialized countries tax competition between countries for mobile capital has frequently been mentioned as an explanation for this development a vast empirical literature dealing with tax competition for mobile capital has emerged this paper categorizes and summarizes the existing empirical studies on this issue particular focus is placed on the isolation of the substantive implications the quantitative study outcomes convey given the empirical evidence surveyed it appears that tax rates indeed decline due to tax competition between countries and in particular due to competition for profits in addition to summarizing the substantive implications of the existing empirical literature the paper addresses the question of whether the existing studies can convincingly isolate tax competition as a driver of falling corporate income tax rates

relocation of the rich migration in response to top tax rate changes from spanish reforms a spanish reform granted regions the authority to set income tax rates resulting in substantial tax differentials using administrative data we find that conditional on moving taxes have a signi

property taxation nash equilibrium and market power abstract differences in tax policy arise from differences in the number of jurisdictions in a metropolitan area following wildasin 4 and bucovetsky 2 the tax rates in the jurisdictions are determined in a nash game in the tax rate the tax rate and public service level as well as the welfare of residents increase as the number of jurisdictions in the metropolis decreases

migration and wage effects of taxing top earners evidence from the foreigners tax scheme in denmark this paper analyzes the eects of income taxation on the international migration and earnings of top earners using a danish preferential foreigner tax scheme and populationwide danish administrative data this scheme introduced in 1991 allows new immigrants with high earnings to be taxed at a preferential at rate for a duration of three years we obtain two main results first the scheme has doubled the number of highly paid foreigners in denmark relative to slightly less paid and therefore ineligible foreigners this translates into a very large elasticity of migration with respect to 1 minus the average tax rate on foreigners between 1 5 and 2 second we nd compelling evidence of a negative eect of the scheme induced reduction in the average tax rate on pre tax earnings of foreign migrants at the individual level this nding can be rationalized by a matching frictions

performance rating and yardstick competition in social service provision abstract this paper investigates whether national evaluation of decentralised government performance tends by lessening local information spill overs to reduce the scope for local performance comparisons and consequently to lower the extent of spatial auto correlation among local government expenditures it analyses local government expenditures on personal social services in the uk before and after the introduction of a national performance assessment system sspr social services performance rating that would attribute a rating to each local authority the empirical evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that the sspr has reduced local yardstick competition

tax base effects and fiscal externalities of local capital taxation evidence from a panel of german jurisdictions abstract this paper provides empirical evidence on the tax base effects of local capital taxation using a large panel of german municipalities it tests whether both the local tax rate and the tax rate in adjacent jurisdictions affect the local tax base the results obtained from a spatial gmm approach confirm a strong negative impact of the local tax rate whereas the average tax rate of neighboring municipalities proves insignificant only if interacted with the relative population size of neighbors a significant positive impact is found indicating that externalities from taxing decisions of adjacent jurisdictions are experienced only by relatively small municipalities

tax competition nash equilibria and residential mobility abstract wildasin journal of public economics 35 241 249 1988 examines and compares the equilibrium policies of governments when they compete in the tax rate and when they compete in the government service he finds that the two equilibrium outcomes differ with governments having greater government expenditures when they compete in taxes wildasin however assumes that residents are immobile here i show that while these two equilibria will still generally differ when residents are mobile wildasin s conclusion that competition in the tax rate results in higher government service levels does not hold when the demand for housing is elastic and government policies are chosen to maximize land rent when governments maximize the utility of landowning residents the results are reversed competition in the tax rate results in higher government service levels when the demand for housing is elastic and lower service levels when the demand is inelastic

the income distribution frontier and taxation of migrants abstract the output distribution frontier which traces out the economy s output and income distribution options is used to confirm and explain intuitively the bhagwati hamada results on the taxation of migrants from ldcs by their native country it is shown that freedom of migration without taxation may reduce the welfare of those who remain in the ldc but that taxation and free migration can be superior for them to either prevention of migration or freedom of migration without taxation an externalities argument shows why even migrants may benefit

an analysis of oil production by opec countries persistence breaks and outliers this study examines the time series behaviour of oil production for opec member countries within a fractional integration modelling framework recognizing the potential for structural breaks and outliers the analysis is undertaken using monthly data from january 1973 to october 2008 for 13 opec member countries the results indicate there is mean reverting persistence in oil production with breaks identified in 10 out of the 13 countries examined thus shocks affecting the structure of opec oil production will have persistent effects in the long run for all countries and in some cases the effects are expected to be permanent

a theory of optimal inheritance taxation this paper derives optimal inheritance tax formulas that a capture the key equityeciency trade o b are expressed in terms of estimable sucient statistics c are robust to the underlying structure of preferences we consider dynamic stochastic models with general and heterogeneous bequest tastes and labor productivities we limit ourselves to simple but realistic linear or two bracket tax structures to obtain tractable formulas we show that long run optimal inheritance tax rates can always be expressed in terms of distributional parameters aggregate behavioral elasticities and social preferences for redistribution importantly those results carry over with tractable modications to a the case with social discounting instead of steady state welfare maximization b the case with partly accidental bequests c the standard barro becker dynastic model in all cases the optimal inheritance tax rate increases with the concentration of bequest received and decreases with the elasticity of aggregate bequests to the net of tax rate the optimal tax rate is positive and quantitatively large if concentration is high the elasticity is low and society cares mostly about those receiving little inheritance in contrast the optimal tax rate is negative when society cares mostly about inheritors we propose a calibration using micro data for france and the united states we nd that for realistic parameters

taxation and migration evidence and policy implications in this article we review a growing empirical literature on the effects of personal taxation on the geographic mobility of people and discuss its policy implications we start by laying out the empirical challenges that prevented progress in this area and then discuss how recent work has made use of new data sources and quasi experimental approaches to credibly estimate migration responses this body of work has shown that certain segments of the labor market especially high income workers and professions with little location specific human capital may be quite responsive to taxes in their location decisions when considering the implications for tax policy design we distinguish between uncoordinated and coordinated tax policy we highlight the importance of recognizing that mobility elasticities are not exogenous structural parameters they can vary greatly depending on the population being analyzed the size of the tax jurisdiction the extent of tax policy coordination and a range of non tax policies while migration responses add to the efficiency costs of redistributing income we caution against over using the recent evidence of sizeable mobility responses to taxes as an argument for less redistribution in a globalized world

the elasticity of taxable income with respect to marginal tax rates a critical review this paper critically surveys the large and growing literature estimating the elasticity of taxable income with respect to marginal tax rates using tax return data first we provide a theoretical framework showing under what assumptions this elasticity can be used as a sufficient statistic for efficiency and optimal tax analysis we discuss what other parameters should be estimated when the elasticity is not a sufficient statistic second we discuss conceptually the key issues that arise in the empirical estimation of the elasticity of taxable income using the example of the 1993 top individual income tax rate increase in the united states to illustrate those issues third we provide a critical discussion of selected empirical analyses of the elasticity of taxable income in light of the theoretical and empirical framework we laid out finally we discuss avenues for future research jel h24 h31 j22

spatial fiscal interactions among french municipalities within inter municipal groups based on a unique data set of french municipalities and a large number of budgetary variables we estimate the extent of spatial fiscal interaction among the 33 484 french municipalities in 2008 by accounting for inter municipal cooperation using a spatial autoregressive model with inter municipal group fixed effects we show that spatial interactions among french municipalities are inflated by correlated effects that affect similarly municipalities that cooperate together removing these confounding effects leads to considerably smaller positive spatial interactions for tax decisions and even negative ones for capital expenditures in addition we observe a clear distinction between complementary choices on current budget items and substitutable choices on capital budget items

vertical versus horizontal tax externalities an empirical test 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 keen michael j kotsogiannis christos 2002 does federalism lead to excessively high taxes american economic review 92 1 363 370 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

alleged tax competition the mysterious death of bequest taxes in switzerland abstract interjurisdictional competition over mobile tax bases is an easily understood mechanism but actual tax base elasticities are difficult to estimate political pressure for reducing tax rates could therefore be based on erroneous estimates of the mobility of tax bases we show that tax competition provided the most prominent argument in the policy debates leading to a succession of reforms of bequest taxation by swiss cantons yet canton level panel data spanning multiple bequest tax reforms over a 36 year period suggest the relevant tax base high income retirees to be relatively inelastic with respect to tax rates the alleged pressures of tax competition did not seem in reality to exist

testing for strategic interaction among local governments the case of growth controls this paper helps to fill a gap in the public economics literature by providing empirical evidence on strategic interaction among local governments using the methodology of case et al journal of public economics 52 285 307 1993 the paper focuses on the adoption of growth control measures by cities in california and looks for evidence of policy interdependence in these choices the data are drawn from an elaborate survey of growth control practices in california cities conducted by glickfeld and levine regional growth local reaction lincoln institute of land policy cambridge ma 1992 the survey results are used to compute an index of the stringency of growth controls in each city which serves as the dependent variable for the study

in search of yardstick competition a spatial analysis of italian municipality property tax setting this paper uses italian local government data to test for fiscal interaction arising from yardstick competition to discriminate yardstick competition from competing theories of strategic interaction we account for the incentives and constraints generated by the electoral system in particular for the presence of term limits and the size of the majorities supporting the mayors estimation of a local property tax setting equation uncovers positive spatial auto correlation in local tax rates of jurisdictions where the mayors run for re election in uncertain contests while interaction is absent where either mayors face a term limit or are backed by large majorities

education and taxation policies in the presence of countervailing incentives i examine income taxation and education policy when the government cannot observe individual productivity and there exist conflicting incentives for individuals to understate and overstate their productivity in this setting i identify four possible equilibria and discuss the corresponding taxation education policy mix i show that no general restrictions on optimal taxation and education policy emerge in this environment but each equilibrium and corresponding policy package can be associated with a country on the basis of its relative income and preference for redistribution

salary differentials by sex in the academic labor market this paper examines faculty time allocation decisions that are fundamental to the functioning of a university a random utility approach yields a grouped data multinomial logit model and predicts that time allocation decisions depend systematically on

the fiscal impact of high skilled emigration flows of indians to the u s abstract what are the fiscal consequences of high skilled emigration for source countries this paper develops methodologies for inferring these consequences and applies them to the recent sizable emigration of high skilled workers from india to the u s this wave of emigration from india to the u s is shown to be unusually concentrated amongst the prime age work force the highly educated and high earners in order to calculate the fiscal losses associated with these emigrants estimates of their counterfactual earnings distributions are generated using two distinct methods and integrated with a model of the indian fiscal system to calculate fiscal consequences conservative estimates indicate that the annual net fiscal impact to india of high skilled emigration to the u s is one half of 1 of gross national income or 2 5 of total fiscal revenues the sensitivity of these results to the method of predicting counterfactual incomes and the implications of these estimates for other developing countries is discussed in detail