sealed bids sunk costs and the process of competition how do firms recover precontract costs for example suppose 10 firms compete in a sealed bid auction for the right to explore and develop an offshore oil field each spends 500 000 to estimate the value of the field and to prepare its bid suppose this investigation reveals that the tract is worth approximately 20 million if sunk costs do not matter competition dictates that the winner must bid 20 million but if the winner is to recover its prebid costs the maximum offer can be only 19 5 million furthermore long run industry equilibrium considerations suggest that the highest bid will be only 15 million 20 million minus the total bid preparation costs of 5 million if competition forces firms to charge marginal cost why do firms ever invest in resources which become sunk in some industries inframarginal rents can be used to recover these costs however the example above as well as many others involves an all or none deci

fiscal paradise foreign tax havens and american business the tax haven affiliates of american corporations account for more than 20 percent of u s foreign direct investment and nearly a third of the foreign profits of u s firms american companies report extraordinarily high profit rates on their tax haven investments in 1982 this behavior implies that the revenue maximizing tax rate for a typical haven is around 5 8 percent american and foreign investment in tax havens has an uncertain effect on u s tax revenue but since low tax rates encourage american companies to shift profits out of high tax foreign countries it is possible that low foreign tax rates ultimately enhance u s tax collections

are corporate tax rates or countries converging abstract the statutory rate and effective tax rate imposed on corporation income as well as the dispersion of these rates began to decline in the 1980s is this due to changes in the domestic determinants of corporate taxation or increases in international pressures for tax competition this paper finds clear evidence that the corporate tax rate is insulated from a country s revenue needs across countries there is no association of the expenditure gdp ratio with the corporate statutory rate and only weak evidence of a positive association with the average rate there is suggestive but not definitive evidence that the domestic role of the corporate tax as a backstop to the individual income tax is important across countries there is indeed a strong association between the top individual rate and the top statutory corporate rate there is intriguing evidence about the role of international competitive pressures on corporate taxation measures of openness are negatively associated with statutory corporate rates although not with revenues collected as a fraction of gdp strikingly larger more trade intensive countries do collect more corporate tax but this may be because these countries are more attractive venues for investment

the new political economy of taxation in advanced capitalist democracies earlier versions of this paper were presented at the 1999 annual meeting of the american political science association september 1 5 atlanta ga and the 2000 annual meeting of the midwest political science association april 27 30 chicago il the authors thank steffen ganghof philip genschel mark hallerberg alex hicks william keech dennis quinn and the anonymous reviewers and editor of this journal for many helpful comments and dennis quinn for generously sharing data duane swank thanks the german marshal fund of the united states and marquette university for support of work incorporated in this paper data utilized in this paper are available from duane swank marquette edu

price setting firms and the oligopolistic foundations of perfect competition theory fails to explain how prices are formed these observations lead us to study the theory of monopolistically competitive markets in which firms choose prices rather than quantities and then to ask whether such large markets approximate perfect competition price setting oligopolies can provide economists with a price formation story prices arise from the profit maximizing decisions of individual firms thus we are able to obtain a theory in which prices are picked by those economic actors who do so in reality although this is a matter of taste we believe that the use of prices instead of quantities as the strategic variables of firms can yield a better simple descriptive model of oligopoly that captures the essential features of many markets this motivation then leads to the question of which price setting model should be used for the study of the oligopolistic foundations of perfect competition in the original model formulated by joseph bertrand 1883 firms have constant marginal and average costs so that any one firm can supply the whole market this assumption leads to the conclusion that the presence of two or more price setting firms suffices to yield perfectly competitive outcomes be

congestion pricing and capacity of large hub airports a bottleneck model with stochastic queues this paper models and estimates congestion prices and capacity for large hub airports the model includes stochastic queues time varying traffic rates and endogenous intertemporal adjustment of traffic in response to queuing delay and fees relative costs of queuing and schedule delays are estimated using data from minneapolis st paul simulations calculate equilibrium traffic patterns queuing delays schedule delays congestion fees airport revenues airport capacity and efficiency gains the paper also investigates whether a dominant airline internalizes delays its aircraft impose it tests game theoretic specifications with atomistic nash dominant stackelberg dominant and collusive airline traffic

does trade liberalization trigger tax competition theory and evidence from oecd countries this article aims at assessing the empirical relevance of new economic geography models of tax competition we rely on a simple model to specify tax reactions functions which we estimate with a panel covering up to 26 oecd countries over the period 1982 to 2006 we provide striking support for the two main predictions regarding the slope and the constant of the reaction function national governments seem to adjust their corporate tax rate towards the level chosen in countries that are more populated and they tend to set higher corporate tax rates when their country enjoys a high real market potential through the latter effect trade integration exerts a positive influence on the level of corporate taxation however using a theoretically grounded index of bilateral trade integration we also show that trade liberalization gives rise to significant tax interactions in the setting of effective average tax rates in the case of european countries thus exerting a downward pressure on corporate tax rates

regulatory delay and the timing of product innovation abstract this paper examines how regulatory delay affects innovation by a regulated firm when product introduction costs fall over time an extra day of regulatory delay increases time to introduction by more than a day when the uncertainty of regulatory delay increases a risk neutral firm responds by moving up the product introduction the model places testable restrictions on the empirical relationship between introduction delay and regulatory delay and is consistent with data gathered from a large u s telecommunications provider

the determinants of cross border equity flows abstract we explore a new panel data set on bilateral gross cross border equity flows between 14 countries 1989 1996 we show that a gravity model explains international transactions in financial assets at least as well as goods trade transactions gross transaction flows depend on market size in source and destination country as well as trading costs in which both information and the transaction technology play a role distance proxies some information costs and other variables explicitly represent information transmission an information asymmetry between domestic and foreign investors and the efficiency of transactions the geography of information is the main determinant of the pattern of international transactions while there is weak support in our data for the diversification motive once we control for the informational friction we broaden the scope of our results by presenting some evidence linking the results on equity transactions to equity holdings

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

regulation innovation and the introduction of new telecommunications services i examine the effects of fcc regulation on the innovation and introduction of advanced telecommunications services in the united states an interim of lighter regulation provides an experiment to test the regulatory regime s impact the econometric model comprises an arrival process for service innovation followed by a duration process for regulatory delay the number of services the firms created during the interim is 60 99 higher than the model predicts they would have created if the stricter regulation had still been in place overall firms would have introduced 62 more services to consumers during the study period if the regulation had not been in place

auctions with endogenous quantity this article studies auctions in which several sellers compete for the right to sell to a market characterized by a negatively sloped demand curve in this environment the quantity traded becomes endogenous this effect leads to three results concerning the outcomes of open versus first price sealed bid auctions first an open auction yields a higher expected price than does sealed bidding second and more important the open auction captures less of the potential gains from trade than does the sealed bid auction third for broad classes of demand curves the efficiency gains from switching to sealed bids from an open auction accrue to both sellers and the buyer so that all concerned parties would agree to the change a direct application of the theory is to procurement the heavy use of sealed bidding in procurement is seen as rational in light of these results auction models with endogenous quantity could be an alternative to price setting oligopoly models for the study of price formation in general for the latter impose strong information requirements on agents and yield only equilibrium price vectors not equilibrium processes for determining prices

what drives corporate tax rates down a reassessment of globalization tax competition and dynamic adjustment to shocks we reassess the driving forces behind the recent decline of corporate tax rates in europe using data for up to 32 countries from 1983 to 2006 we analyze the roles of economic and financial openness as well as tax competition while allowing for dynamic adjustment to shocks and period specific and country specific effects while there is no evidence that countries that have become more open have reduced their tax rates more our findings suggest that countries strongly compete over statutory tax rates a simulation of tax rates in a scenario with no cross sectional dependence in tax setting suggests that in the absence of tax competition the mean statutory tax rate of western european countries in 2006 would have been about 12 5 percentage points above its actual level we conclude that the recent downward trend in corporate taxes is mainly a result of tax competition

bertrand competition with cost uncertainty abstract we analyze the classical model of bertrand competition in a homogeneous good market with constant marginal costs and uncertainty regarding rivals costs first we show that there exists a mixed strategy nash equilibrium under the conventional equal sharing rule second we illustrate the result for the case of piecewise affine market demand

the influence of regulations on innovation a quantitative assessment for oecd countries abstract regulatory framework conditions have been identified as important factors influencing the innovation activities of companies industries and whole economies however in the empirical literature the impacts of regulation have been assessed as rather ambivalent for innovation different types of regulations generate various impacts and even a single type of regulation can influence innovation in various ways depending on how the regulation is implemented the endogenous growth approach developed by carlin and soskice 2006 and empirically applied by crafts 2006 which determines endogenously the rate of technological progress and therefore innovation allows a conceptual analysis of the influence of different types of regulation on innovation in general the negative effect of compliance costs should be compared with the more dynamic effect of regulations generating additional incentives for innovative activities based on this approach we derive hypotheses on the impact of different specific regulations on innovation we differentiate between economic social and institutional regulations following the oecd taxonomy on regulations existing economic analyses are surveyed which are characterised by rather heterogeneous approaches data bases and results the paper aims to apply a comprehensive and comparative approach to investigate quantitatively the innovation impacts in 21 oecd countries using panel data for the period between 1998 and 2004 in summary the empirical results confirm the hypotheses derived from the conceptual theoretical framework determining technical progress and innovation endogenously and allowing a distinction between short term and long term effects consequently the theoretical approach is an appropriate starting point for the empirical analysis of the influence of different regulations on innovation

capital market integration and fiscal sustainability abstract by constructing a two country endogenous growth model with a debt financing government this paper studies the relationship between the sustainability of public finance and increases in inter regional factor mobility to this end it identifies the minimum tax rate that ensures fiscal sustainability against the backdrop of capital tax competition and studies whether competition for mobile capital lowers or improves fiscal sustainability the main findings are as follows i when countries are symmetric increasing capital flows promotes economic growth through the expansion of romer type knowledge spillovers resulting in increased fiscal sustainability in all countries and ii when a marked difference exists between countries tax competition caused by capital movements might lower fiscal sustainability in a country with abundant capital and large outstanding debt

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

unbundling the local loop abstract we study competition for high bandwidth services in the telecommunications industry by introducing the possibility of unbundling the local loop where leased lines permit the entrant to provide services without building up its own infrastructure we use a dynamic model of technology adoption and study the incentives of the entrant to lease loops and compete service based and or to build up a new and more efficient infrastructure and compete facility based given the rental price we show that the incumbent sets too low a rental price for its loops hence the entrant adopts the new technology too late from a social welfare perspective the distortion may appear not only on the timing of technology adoption but also on the type quality of the new technology to be adopted we also show that while regulating the rental price may suffice to achieve socially desirable outcomes a sunset clause does not improve social welfare

preemptive patenting and the persistence of monopoly this article takes a different tack and inquires whether institutions such as the patent system create opportunities for firms with monopoly power to maintain their monopoly power the results apply to other situations such as brand identification spatial location and capacity expansion which share the characteristic that early or preemptive actions may lower the returns to potential competitors

procuring fast delivery sole sourcing with information asymmetry this paper studies a queuing model in which a buyer sources a good or service from a single supplier chosen from a pool of suppliers the buyer seeks to minimize the sum of her procurement and operating costs the latter of which depends on the suppliers lead time the selected supplier can regulate his lead time but faster lead times are costly although the buyer selects the supplier to source from possibly via an auction and dictates the contractual terms the buyers bargaining power is limited by asymmetric information the buyer only has an estimate of the suppliers costs while the suppliers know their costs precisely we identify a procurement mechanism that minimizes the buyers total cost procurement plus operating this mechanism is not simple it is a numerically derived nonlinear menu of contracts therefore we study several simpler mechanisms e g one that charges a late fee and one that specifies a fixed lead time requirement no menus no nonlinear functions we find that simple mechanisms are nearly optimal generally within 1 of optimal because asymmetric information conveys significant protection to the supplier i e the supplier is able to retain most of the benefit of having a lower cost renegotiation is another concern with the optimal mechanism because it does not minimize the supply chains cost the firms can be both better off if they throw away the contract and start over interestingly we find that the potential gain from renegotiation is relatively small with either the optimal or our simple mechanisms we conclude that our simple mechanisms are quite attractive along all relevant dimensions buyers performance supply chain performance simplicity and robustness to renegotiation

auctions and bidding a primer maybe the contractor was right to think bid jobs are different but it is more likely that he suffered from too simple a view of what is involved in preparing a competitive bid our analysis will show that even an experienced estimator working in familiar terrain can lose money if he doesn t understand the subtleties of competitive bidding the phenomenon experienced by the painting contractor known as the winner s curse is just one of the surprising and puzzling conclusions that have been turned up by modern research into auctions another is the theoretical proposition supported also by some experimental evidence that for example a sealed bid treasury bill auction in which each buyer pays a price equal to the highest rejected bid would yield more revenue to the treasury than the current procedure in which the winning bidder pays the seemingly higher amount equal to his own bid there are also subtle results that demonstrate the equivalence of such apparently different institutions as the standard sealed bid auction in which the auctioneer seller sells the goods to the highest bidder for a price equal to his bid and the dutch auction in which the auctioneer seller begins by asking a high price and gradually lowers the price until

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

competition from low wage countries and the decline of corporate tax rates evidence from european integration we exploit the rapid economic integration of eastern and western europe after 1989 as a natural experiment to assess the eect of international competition for mobile capital on corporate tax rates by means of a series of dierence in dier ence estimations we show

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

permit market auctions with allowance reserves this article investigates pollution permit auctions that incorporate allowance reserves in these auctions the sale of a fixed quantity of permits is supplemented by an additional permit reserve this reserve automatically releases permits if a sufficiently high price is triggered the main justifications for implementing an allowance reserve are to reduce price volatility as well as assisting in cost containment we show paradoxically that incorporating an allowance reserve into a permit auction can decrease firms payoffs increase the clearing price and increase compliance costs this has implications for all major cap and trade markets including the us regional greenhouse gas initiative

relying on the information of interested parties we investigate the conventional wisdom that competition among interested parties attempting to influence a decisionmaker by providing verifiable information elicits all relevant information we find that if the decisionmaker is strategically sophisticated and well informed about the relevant variables and about the preferences of the interested party or parties competition may be unnecessary to achieve this result if the decisionmaker is unsophisticated or not well informed competition is not generally sufficient if the interested parties interests are sufficiently opposed however or if the decisionmaker is seeking to advance the parties welfare then competition can reduce or even eliminate the decisionmaker s need for prior knowledge about the relevant variables and for strategic sophistication in other settings only the combination of competition among information providers and a sophisticated skepticism is sufficient to allow effective decisionmaking

international profit shifting within multinationals a multi country perspective abstract we model the opportunities and incentives generated by international tax differences for international profit shifting by multinationals the model considers not only profit shifting arising from international tax differences between affiliates and parent companies but also from tax differences between affiliates in different host countries our model yields the prediction that a multinational s profit shifting in a country depends on a weighted average of international tax rate differences between all countries where the multinational is active using a unique dataset containing detailed firm level information on the parent companies and subsidiaries of european multinationals and information about the international tax system we test our model and empirically examine the extent of intra european profit shifting by european multinationals on average we find a semi elasticity of reported profits with respect to the top statutory tax rate of 1 3 while shifting costs are estimated to be 0 6 of the tax base international profit shifting leads to a substantial redistribution of national corporate tax revenues many european nations appear to gain revenues from profit shifting by multinationals largely at the expense of germany

strategic pollution control and capital tax competition abstract in an analytical model of symmetric countries with mobile capital and local or transboundary pollution we investigate whether competition in emissions taxes or emissions caps and capital taxes leads to efficient outcomes when governments act strategically when they have capital taxes and emissions caps at their disposal they refrain from taxing capital and set their caps inefficiently lax efficient for transboundary local pollution when they have the option to tax capital and emissions capital is subsidized untaxed and emissions taxes are inefficiently low efficient for transboundary local pollution in case of transboundary pollution emissions caps are pareto superior to emissions taxes that holds regardless of whether the environmental policy is applied as stand alone policy or combined with capital tax competition