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Capital tax competition is known to result in inefficiently low tax rates and an undersupply of public goods. The provision of public goods and with it the welfare of all countries can be enhanced via tax coordination. Based on the standard Zodrow-Mieszkowski-Wilson tax-competition model this paper analyses the conditions under which tax coordination by a group of countries is self-enforcing. It is shown that there always exists a rather small stable tax coalition. For some subset of the parameter space the grand coalition may be stable as well, even if the total number of countries is large. The small stable coalition is not very effective in mitigating the inefficiency of the non-cooperative Nash equilibrium. The ineffectiveness is increasing in the total number of countries.

We revisit the canonical policy of eliminating capital taxation by increasing labor taxation in a endogenous-labor, heterogeneous-agent model with income and wealth heterogeneity, when the government is subject to a strict (per-period) balancedbudget constraint. By contrast with its non-budget neutral equivalent-associated with a constant tax rate over time and a permanent increase in the level of public debt-we show that the obtained endogenous path for the labor tax rate is sharply increasing in the initial period and decreasing over time. The policy then generates a deeper recession in the short-run and a greater expansion in the long-run, as well as a smaller decline in wealth inequality associated with a reduced incentive to save for precautionary motives. Overall, the policy still generates significant losses in average welfare.

We revisit the canonical policy of eliminating capital taxation by increasing labor taxation in a endogenous-labor, heterogeneous-agent model with income and wealth heterogeneity, when the government is subject to a strict (per-period) balancedbudget constraint. By contrast with its non-budget neutral equivalent-associated with a constant tax rate over time and a permanent increase in the level of public debt-we show that the obtained endogenous path for the labor tax rate is sharply increasing in the initial period and decreasing over time. The policy then generates a deeper recession in the short-run and a greater expansion in the long-run, as well as a smaller decline in wealth inequality associated with a reduced incentive to save for precautionary motives. Overall, the policy still generates significant losses in average welfare.

We revisit the canonical policy of eliminating capital taxation by increasing labor taxation in a endogenous-labor, heterogeneous-agent model with income and wealth heterogeneity, when the government is subject to a strict (per-period) balancedbudget constraint. By contrast with its non-budget neutral equivalent-associated with a constant tax rate over time and a permanent increase in the level of public debt-we show that the obtained endogenous path for the labor tax rate is sharply increasing in the initial period and decreasing over time. The policy then generates a deeper recession in the short-run and a greater expansion in the long-run, as well as a smaller decline in wealth inequality associated with a reduced incentive to save for precautionary motives. Overall, the policy still generates significant losses in average welfare.

The paper studies the role of capital mobility for efficiency of decentralized fiscal policies in a tax competition model where only a distorting wage, the residencebased and the source-based capital tax are available. We extend Bucovetsky and Wilson (1991) in deriving second-best taxation rules for small and large countries for each of the four possible combinations of tax instruments both in environments with an unconstrained and with a constrained set of tax instruments available to fiscal authorities. Whereas the model reproduces the result that countries underprovide local public goods in the absence of a residence-based capital tax, Nash equilibria are efficient in the two-tax cases if residence-based capital taxes but no source-based capital or else wage taxes are available. Moreover, aggregate production is situated on the world production frontier when the set of fiscal instruments is unrestricted.

We provide a welfare based interpretation of the capital tax ambiguity result (due to Guo & Lansing, 1999). We show that the sign ambiguity of optimal capital tax rate in an imperfectly competitive economy is mainly due to the welfare cost of investment. The substitution and income effects of profit seeking investment reinforce each other which create a deadweight loss in welfare. Investors cannot perceive this effect and never invest at the right level. This loss is perceived only by the government which motivates capital taxation.

Ogawa et al. (2006) analyze capital tax competition in a fixed-wage approach and show that the original results of Zodrow and Mieszkowski (1986) are not preserved in the presence of unemployment. In the present paper we challenge this view and investigate capital tax competition for some arbitrary institutional setting of the labor market. We find that if the labor market is characterized by some efficient bargaining solution, the results of Zodrow and Mieszkowski (1986) are preserved.

Capital tax competition is analyzed in a model with a single private and a locally supplied public consumption good. As a benchmark case necessary conditions for efficient interregional tax structures are derived and contrasted with the outcome of beggar thy neighbor strategies. If households are immobile an intervention of a central government can be justified to raise efficiency of the NASH equilibrium. In contrast, NASH equilibria are efficient if households are imperfectly mobile because regions have incentives to ensure an efficient interregional resource allocation via granting interregional transfer payments.

Capital tax competition is analyzed in a model with a single private and a locally supplied public consumption good. As a benchmark case necessary conditions for efficient interregional tax structures are derived and contrasted with the outcome of beggar thy neighbor strategies. If households are immobile an intervention of a central government can be justified to raise efficiency of the NASH equilibrium. In contrast, NASH equilibria are efficient if households are imperfectly mobile because regions have incentives to ensure an efficient interregional resource allocation via granting interregional transfer payments.

I analyze international tax competition in a framework of dynamic optimal taxation for strategically competing governments. The global capital stock is determined endogenously as in a neo-classical growth model. With perfect commitment and a complete tax system (where all factors of production can be taxed), governments set their capital taxes so that the net return is equal to the social marginal product of capital. Capital accumulation thus follows the modified golden rule. This is independent of relative country size, capital taxes in other countries, and the degree of capital mobility. In contrast, with an exogenous capital stock returns on capital are pure rents and a government's ability to capture them is limited through capital flight, triggering a race to the bottom. With an endogenous capital stock, capital is an intermediate good and taxes on it are not used to raise revenues, but to implement the optimal capital stock. Even in a non-cooperative game it is thus not individually rational for governments to engage in tax competition. I provide a general proof that if the modified golden rule holds in a closed economy, then it also does in an open economy.