Suchergebnisse

AbstractA core question regarding the increasing share of international trade in financial services is whether this causes banks to take more or fewer risks. We study this issue in a setting where two multinational banks engage in duopoly competition for their lending in two regional markets. Each bank affiliate can choose both the lending volume and the level of monitoring, and hence risk‐taking, where the risk of bank failure is partly borne by taxpayers in the bank affiliate's host country. Governments choose minimum capital requirements to optimally solve the trade‐off between higher lending volumes and consumer surplus, and the expected tax losses faced by taxpayers. In this setting, we consider two types of financial integration. A reduction in the transaction costs of cross‐border banking increases risk‐taking by banks, harming taxpayers and potentially overall welfare. In contrast, a reduction in the costs of screening foreign firms reduces banks' risk‐taking and is beneficial for consumers and taxpayers alike.

We study the tax/subsidy competition between two countries to attract the FDI projects of two firms. We assume that governments lack the capacity to target every potential inward investor such that each can only bid for a single firm. When the characteristics of the two countries are common knowledge, subsidy competition never arises in equilibrium. Both governments may target the same firm if there is uncertainty as to the more profitable location for that firm's plant, such that both governments believe they may win the competition. We also explore how such uncertainty affects the firms' after-tax profits.

A core question regarding the increasing share of international trade in financial services is whether this causes banks to take more or fewer risks. We study this issue in a setting where two multinational banks engage in duopoly competition for their lending in two regional markets. Each bank affiliate can choose both the lending volume and the level of monitoring, and hence risk-taking, where the risk of bank failure is partly borne by taxpayers in the bank affiliate's host country. Governments choose minimum capital requirements to optimally solve the trade-off between higher lending volumes and consumer surplus, and the expected tax losses faced by taxpayers. In this setting we consider two types of financial integration. A reduction in the transaction costs of cross-border banking increases risk-taking by banks, harming taxpayers and potentially overall welfare. In contrast, a reduction in the costs of screening foreign firms reduces banks' risk-taking and is beneficial for consumers and taxpayers alike.

Abstract We analyse the tax/subsidy competition between two potential host governments to attract the plants of firms in a duopolistic industry. While competition between identical countries for a monopolist's investment is known to result in subsidy inflation, two firms can be taxed in equilibrium with the host countries appropriating the entire social surplus generated within the industry, despite explicit non‐cooperation between governments. Trade costs mean that the firms prefer dispersed to co‐located production, creating these taxation opportunities for the host countries. We determine the country‐size asymmetry that changes the nature of the equilibrium, inducing concentration of production in the larger country.

The EU policy against harmful tax competition aims at eliminating tax policies targeted at attracting the internationally mobile tax base. We construct an imperfectly competitive model of costly trade between two countries. In setting their corporate taxes, governments non-cooperatively decide whether to discriminate between internationally mobile and immobile firms. We find the Nash equilibrium tax regimes. When trade costs are high countries impose a uniform tax on all firms while nations will discriminate between mobile and immobile firms when costs are low. At some trade costs, fiscal competition results in tax discrimination despite uniform taxation being socially preferable.

We examine the interaction between goods trade and market power in domestic trade and distribution sectors. Theory suggests a set of linkages between service-sector competition and goods trade supported by econometrics involving imports of 22 OECD countries vis-à-vis 69 exporters. Competition in services affects the volume of goods trade while the market structure of the domestic service sector becomes increasingly important as tariffs are reduced. Empirically, lack of service competition apparently matters most for exporters in smaller, poorer countries. By ignoring the structure of the domestic services sector, we may be seriously overestimating the market-access benefits of tariff reductions.

We set up a model of generalised oligopoly where two countries of different size compete for an exogenous, but variable, number of identical firms. The model combines a desire by national governments to attract internationally mobile firms with the existence of location rents that arise even in a symmetric equilibrium where firms are dispersed. As economic integration proceeds, equilibrium taxes decline, switching from positive to negative levels, and then rise as trade costs fall even further. A range of trade costs is identified where economic integration raises the welfare of the small country, but lowers welfare in the large country.