Jurisdictional Tax Competition and the Division of Nonrenewable Resource Rents

This paper presents a model of nonrenewable resource extraction across multiple jurisdictions which engage in strategic tax competition. The model incorporates rents due to both resource scarcity and capital scarcity as well as intra-region Ricardian rents. Regions set taxes on nonrenewable resource production strategically to balance tax revenues and local benefits from investment conditional on other regions’ tax rates. A representative extraction firm then allocates production capital across regions and time to maximize the present value of profits. Generally, we find that the division of resource rent between firms and regional governments ultimately depends on the relative scarcity of natural and production capital, relative costs across space, and the value regional governments place on economic activity. This theoretical result provides policymakers with information on the determinants of optimal tax rates and motivates future empirical research on the factors influencing the division of resource rent in practice.     

International Commodity Taxation under Monopolistic Competition

We analyze non‐cooperative commodity taxation in a two‐country trade model characterized by monopolistic competition and international firm and capital mobility. In this setting, taxes in one country affect foreign welfare through the relocation of mobile firms and through changes in the rents accruing to capital owners. With consumption‐based taxation, these fiscal externalities exactly offset each other and the non‐cooperative tax equilibrium is Pareto efficient. With production‐based taxation, however, there are additional externalities on the foreign tax base and the foreign price level that lead non‐cooperative tax rates to exceed their Pareto efficient levels.     

Taxation of a Polluting Non-renewable Resource in the Heterogeneous World

This paper extends the literature on the taxation of polluting exhaustible resources by taking international heterogeneities and national tax-setting into account. We propose a two-country Romer model of endogenous growth in which the South is endowed with the stock of an essential polluting non-renewable resource and world economic growth is driven by a northern research sector. We consider the stock of pollution as affecting global welfare. First, we characterize the optimal environmental taxation policies. Second, we examine the impacts of national taxes. Their time profile determines the extraction path, the dynamics of pollution accumulation and that of world output. Their respective levels entail inter-country interactions by altering the efficiency of the world resource allocation, the tax revenues and the resource rents. We study isolatedly the distortional and distributional effects of local taxes. Then, we completely assess the overall impact of a unilateral tax increase. Finally, we find that, even if heterogeneous countries coordinate their taxation policies to correct the global environmental problem, their divergent strategic interests cause another global, non-environmental distortion in the allocation of the resource.     

The role of infrastructure investment and factor productivity in international tax competition

In this paper we use data from 30 developed economies from 1999 to 2014 to analyse the importance of infrastructure investments and factor productivity for explaining international capital tax competition. Our results indicate the existence of intensive tax competition in effective average corporate taxation during this period. It is also suggested that non-tax variables of third countries affect a country's corporate tax policy. Countries whose direct competitors have better infrastructures or are more productive compensate with lower capital taxation. In this way, their infrastructure investment and productivity-enhancing policies are used as strategic substitutes for capital taxation. With regard to the characteristics of closest competitors, we find that corporate tax competition is fiercer among countries that are characterized by similar infrastructure investments and geographical proximity.     

Capital Mobility—Resource Gains or Losses? How,When, and for Whom?

This paper investigates which of the two types of countries—resource‐rich or resource‐poor—gains from capital market integration and capital tax competition. We develop a framework involving vertical linkages through resource‐based inputs as well as international fiscal linkages between the two types of countries. Our analysis shows that capital market integration causes capital flows from resource‐poor to resource‐rich countries and improves global production efficiency. However, such gains accrue only to resource‐poor countries, and capital mobility might even negatively affect resource‐rich countries. Furthermore, we show that resource‐rich countries can exploit the gains when taxes on capital are available.     

Does size asymmetry exacerbate the inefficiency of tax competition?

Many authors demonstrate that the tax gap resulting from tax competition increases with the size asymmetry of the competing countries. Consequently, increasing country-size disparities exacerbates the inefficiency of tax competition. The aim of this note is to show that this classical view has no general validity, if we consider that countries compete not only in taxes, but also in the provision of infrastructure. The simple model we develop for this purpose demonstrates that the effect of size disparity on efficiency depends crucially on the degree of international capital mobility.     

Managing the quality of a resource with stock and flow controls

We consider a class of problems, which we call “SFQ” problems, in which both stocks and flows can be controlled to promote the quality of a valued resource, such as environmental quality or public infrastructure. Under the optimal policy, periodic restoration of the stock of quality complements positive but variable abatement of the flow of damages. When deterioration is more rapid or highly variable, or when abatement is more expensive relative to restoration, the optimal policy relies relatively more on restoration.When deterioration is due to private firms or individuals, a flow tax equal to the present value of marginal damages provides efficient incentives for abatement. This tax rises at first as quality worsens, but eventually falls as restoration nears. The revenues raised by such a tax approximates the cost of restoration, with the two quantities converging as the variance of flows goes to zero.We discuss the implications of the SFQ model for a range of real-world problems in the environmental arena, and for the management of public infrastructure. But the lessons are general, and we briefly discuss how they apply to private stocks of physical and human capital.     

生态赤字税：绿色发展与税制改革*

本文在量化生态占用并评估生态价值基础上,提出运用税收实现超额生态占用价值补偿的税收方案,也称生态赤字税。根据税制生态化的改革思路,本文运用CGE模型分析了征收生态赤字税和降低所得税的政策效应。本文研究发现：(1)在各税收方案中,生态赤字减少,就业增加,支持双重红利假说,全行业中间投入减少相对总产出减少更大,名义GDP保持增长;(2)实际GDP在生态赤字税基础上仅减少企业所得税的方案中下降,同时减少个人所得税则能实现增长,此时减税额低于生态赤字税收入;(3)在开征生态赤字税同时,降低个人所得税在保持经济增长方面较好,降低企业所得税在减少生态赤字方面较好,但降低企业所得税所减少的生态赤字价值低于降低个人所得税时劳动和资本增加值的提高。本文建议在完善生态占用核算基础上开征生态赤字税,并减轻所得税,促进经济增长由资源环境消耗转向劳动和资本投入的绿色发展。     

International capital markets,oil producers and the Green Paradox

A rapidly rising carbon tax leads to faster extraction of fossil fuels and accelerates global warming. We analyze how general equilibrium effects operating through the international capital market affect this Green Paradox. In a two-region, two-period world with identical homothetic preferences and without investment, the global interest rate falls and the Green Paradox weakens. With investment or a relatively more impatient oil-importing region, the Green Paradox may be strengthened because the future oil demand function shifts downward or because the interest rate rises. If the oil-importing region is very much more patient than the oil-exporting region, the Green Paradox may be reversed but in our calibrated model the effects are tiny. With exploration and endogenous initial oil reserves, a future carbon tax lowers cumulative oil extraction in partial equilibrium. If the boost to current oil extraction is weakened, strengthened or reversed in general equilibrium, so is the fall in cumulative extraction. A partial and general equilibrium welfare analysis of a future carbon tax, both for full and partial exhaustion, is given. The effects of stock-dependent extraction costs are separately discussed in an Appendix.     

Globalization, Asymmetric Tax Competition, and Fiscal Equalization

Trade integration and the increasing mobility of firms have raised the need for international coordination in corporate tax. In this paper, we study the ability of fiscal equalization to avoid the misallocation of capital across asymmetric countries arising from tax competition. Such a reform respects the principle according to which the tax decision is entirely left up to the nation and links nations engaged in strategic tax policy by transfers. We use a model of trade and location where firms produce under imperfect competition. Our analysis suggests that falling trade costs increase the distortion created by tax competition in the international allocation of production. However, we show that fiscal equalization based on differences in tax revenues or tax base can implement a more efficient tax wedge and spatial allocation of the tax base.     

Environmental Tax in a Green Market

We examine the impact of an emission tax in a green market characterized by consumers’ environmental awareness and competition between firms for both environmental quality and product prices. The unique aspect of this model comes from the assumption that the cost for an increase in quality is fixed. We show that the emission tax improves welfare, thanks to a decline in pollution and despite an accentuation of product differentiation. The higher the marginal environmental damage is, the higher the optimal tax will be. The optimal tax, however, becomes lower than the marginal damage when the market is not too large. Finally, when marginal environmental damage is not too low, the optimal tax leads to a green product monopoly.     

Endogenous fiscal policies,environmental quality,and status-seeking behavior

This paper analyzes endogenous fiscal policy in an endogenous growth model where agents care about social status and environmental quality. The quest for a higher status is assimilated to a preference for capital wealth. The government uses income tax to finance infrastructure and environmental protection. We find that accounting for preferences for social status and environmental quality may lead to an allocation of tax revenue in favor of a cleanup effort to the detriment of infrastructure. Economic growth is not necessarily and negatively affected by this allocation as it is partly explained by an excessive accumulation of capital wealth due to the quest of status. Status seeking can however harm economic growth and environmental quality when its motive is important enough. Finally, we show that economic growth may be consistent with environmental preservation but is not necessarily welfare-improving as in the case of absence of status-seeking behavior.     

Pollution, Capital Mobility and Tax Policies with Unemployment

In this paper we highlight aspects related to the links among unemployment, international capital mobility, and tax policies in a small open developing economy. Without international capital mobility, the joint optimal trade and environmental policies require a zero tariff and an emission tax lower than the Pigouvian tax. With international capital mobility and a capital tax (subsidy), the optimal emission tax rate is smaller (larger) compared to the rate when capital is untaxed. When both the emission tax and the capital tax/subsidy are jointly chosen optimally, then the optimal policy on capital is a lower subsidy, or even a tax, compared to the standard capital subsidy of the no pollution case.     

生态赤字税：理论与实证研究框架

文章基于生态足迹核算方法和生态服务价值理论所确定的价格体系,在核算生态赤字及其价值并提出其价值补偿的环境税方案的基础上,将生态占用作为一种要素投入,构建绿色社会核算矩阵和环境税 CGE 模型,通过数值模拟比较分析了在5%、10%和30%的补偿强度下税收方案的环境效应、就业效应、增长效应、分配效应和贸易效应。模拟结果表明：(1)生态赤字税方案具有减少生态占用和增加就业的双重红利效应;(2)各部门的总产出和中间投入总体上下降,但名义 GDP 增长,绿色 GDP 增幅更大,而实际 GDP 则下降,表明税收政策会造成价格指数一定程度的上升;(3)政府税收收入因生态赤字补偿额度较大而增长较快,且增速高于劳动和资本要素报酬的增长,但居民收入和企业收入比重略有下降。基于我国资源与环境等税收在总税收中的比重,以及 OECD 国家的税制结构和变化趋势,文章最后建议生态赤字税的补偿性税率应低于5%。     

Capital Accumulation and Resource Depletion: A Hartwick Rule Counterfactual

How much produced capital would resource-abundant countries have today if they had actually followed the Hartwick Rule (invest resource rents in other assets) over the last 30 years? We employ time series data on investment and rents on exhaustible resource extraction for 70 countries to answer this question. The results are striking: Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago, and Gabon would all have as much produced capital as South Korea, while Nigeria would have five times its current level. A specific rule for sustainability – maintain positive constant genuine investment – is shown to lead to unbounded consumption.     

International tax coordination: regionalism versus globalism

Tax competition for mobile capital can undermine the attempts of governments to redistribute income from rich to poor. I study whether international tax coordination can alleviate this problem, using a general equilibrium model synthesizing recent contributions to the tax competition literature. The model highlights the crucial distinction between global tax coordination and regional coordination. With high capital mobility between the tax union and the rest of the world, the welfare gain from regional capital income tax coordination is only a small fraction of the gain from global coordination, even if the tax union is large relative to the world economy.     

Who is afraid of capital mobility? on taxation of labor income and the level of public services in an open economy

This paper deals with the effects of international capital mobility on the taxation of labor income and on the size of the public sector. It employs a model of the labor market where national trade unions set the wage level in their country and national governments set the tax rate of a proportional labor-income tax. The tax revenues are used to finance a public good and unemployment benefits. In this model, competition between the national trade unions caused by international capital mobility leads to full employment, and the governments supply the public good on the first best level. As no unemployment benefits have to be financed, the tax on labor income may decline with the introduction of capital mobility. These tax cuts may even overcompensate the unions for the wage decline.     

Biofuels and Climate Change Mitigation: A CGE Analysis Incorporating Land-Use Change

We examine the impact of a “green network effect” in a market characterized by consumers’ environmental awareness and competition between firms in terms of both environmental quality and product prices. The unique aspect of this model comes from the assumption that an increase in the number of consumers of green (brown) product increases the satisfaction of each green (brown) consumer. We show that, paradoxically, when the network effect of a green product is higher than that of a brown product, this externality reduces product environmental quality and raises consumption of the green product. Conversely, when the network effect of the brown product is higher, the externality improves product environmental quality and raises consumption of the brown product. In both cases, the network effect does not affect the overall pollution level. The externality correction requires the use of three optimal fiscal policies: an ad valorem tax on products, an emission tax, and a subsidy or a tax on the green purchase. A second-best optimum can also be reached through the green taxation.     

Should mobile capital pay for public infrastructure investment?

The paper contributes to the discussion of fiscal competition with infrastructure goods. We explicitly focus on the costs of providing public infrastructure capital that appear in the public budget as investment. Thus we analyse the problem in a dynamic framework. Public infrastructure is considered as a marginal product complement to private capital. A central result of the model is that the fact that public capital is a complement to private capital, so that an increase in the supply of public capital ceteris paribus improves the marginal productivity of private capital, cannot be used as an argument to support a source tax. The so-called indirect productivity effect on private capital induced by public inputs does not justify the taxation of mobile capital. Rather, the efficiency of a source tax on mobile capital income depends on the question of whether or not the public input generates a factor rent to private capital.

Capital income taxation,tax criteria,and intergenerational welfare

In a two-period overlapping-generations model, residence criteria are shown to be optimal with lump-sum transfers to the younger generation in a dynamically efficient open economy even if all wage income, corresponding to rent income under exogenous labor supply, is not taxed away. When tax revenues are also distributed to the older generation — which indeed may be desirable for short-term intergenerational welfare distribution reasons — a weighted average rule is derived for optimal international taxation. The taxation of domestic savings income follows the inverse elasticity rule in respect to savings and, surprisingly, higher investment elasticity increases the tax level. Finally, for a small open economy and for large identical economies, tax competition with a mixed scheme of residence-based taxes and source-based subsidies yields the same tax policy as tax cooperation with no restrictions on the domestic and international capital income tax instruments.