International Capital Mobility in the Presence of Unemployment Insurance

The paper develops a general–equilibrium model with layoff unemployment to examine the effect of different unemployment insurance policies on international capital mobility. Conditions are derived under which capital will flow to the high–benefit country. Incentives for international capital movements are unaffected by how the burden of financing unemployment benefits is distributed between workers and firms. It is shown that capital outflows might have positive welfare effects for workers. This contrasts with results from standard models of international factor movements.     

Tax Competition, Capital Mobility and Innovation in the Public Sector

Abstract. The paper analyses the impact of tax competition on innovation in the public sector. It is shown that the effects of increased mobility of the tax base on innovation and growth are ambiguous. The negative relationship is more likely, however. Moreover, it is shown that a Leviathan government may be induced to spend a larger share of its budget on unproductive activities.     

Tax Competition, Capital Mobility, and Public Good Provision Within a Trading Block

The authors examine a two–country general–equilibrium model of a two–country trading block where governments through tax policies attract mobile capital and provide an imported public consumption good. Within this framework the authors examine, among other things, how preferences over the public good and the size (population) of a country affect the Nash or cooperative equilibrium values of income tax rates in the two countries. The analysis identifies sufficient conditions under which (i) the Nash/cooperative equilibrium income tax rates are strategic substitutes or complements, and (ii) the Nash equilibrium income tax rates may be greater than the cooperative rates.     

台湾创业投资税收政策及其启示

台湾地区的创业投资是推动科技产业发展的重要力量,目前其活跃程度仅次于美国排名全球第二.在创投业发展的不同阶段,台湾政府主要采用对创投公司股东提供投资税收抵减优惠政策、健全创投业筹资、投资范围及退出渠道建设等方法,来引导创投业的发展.从台湾的经验中我们可以看出税收政策支持创业投资事业的必要性、有效性.相比而言,大陆地区针对创业投资行业的税收政策存在缺位现象.借鉴台湾经验,可以对创业投资采取阶段性倾斜政策.     

Unemployment, Factor Substitution and Capital Formation

Abstract. We incorporate a wage-bargaining structure in a dynamic general equilibrium model and show how this feature changes short- and long-run properties of equilibria compared with a perfectly competitive setting. We discuss how employment, capital and income shares respond to wage-setting shocks and show that adjustment dynamics depend decisively on the magnitude of the elasticity of substitution between labour and capital. Values of the elasticity below unity add persistence, tend to preserve stability and lead to empirically plausible adjustment patterns. By contrast, values above unity introduce additional volatility, thereby making steady states potentially unstable.     

Tax Reform,Structural Unemployment and the Environment

The effects of environmental tax reform, i.e., using the proceeds of a higher energy tax rate to lower the labour tax rate, on wage formation, employment and environmental quality are analysed in the context of a small open economy with structural unemployment caused by hiring costs. We find that such a reform may boost employment if it shifts the tax burden away from workers towards those without employment in the formal sector. Environmental tax reform succeeds in shifting the tax burden away from workers in the formal sector if higher energy taxes reduce earnings in the informal sector by reducing labour productivity.     

Welfare Effects of Immigration Policies in the Presence of Skilled,Unskilled Labor and Capital Mobility

This paper investigates the welfare consequences of immigration policies in a model with two types of labor, skilled and unskilled, and international capital mobility. The paper examines the effect of government policies, which change the immigration cost and cause immigration of one type of labor, on the welfare of natives, when the other types of labor and/or capital are also mobile. It is shown, for example, in the absence of capital mobility, if skilled and unskilled labor are highly complementary in production, then a decrease in the immigration cost of the net fiscal contributor skilled labor that causes its immigration, decreases the welfare of natives.     

促进风险投资发展的税收政策选择

本文在分析了税收与风险投资相关性的基础上,结合我国风险投资税收政策的现状,提出了促进风险投资发展的税收政策措施.笔者认为,根据我国实际,对风险投资的税收政策应具有系统性,即应对风险投资包括的三个市场主体--风险投资者、风险投资公司和风险投资企业分别采取相应的税收优惠政策,以有利于风险投资事业的发展.     

Foreign Capital, Urban Unemployment, and Economic Growth

A three-sector endogenous growth model, is used to study the effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) on the dynamics of urban unemployment, labour income, and capital income as well as national welfare in a Harris–Todaro economy. It is shown that more FDI can affect the economy's dynamics and national welfare positively or negatively. The paper derives conditions as to how the growth rate and welfare effects of FDI relate to the intersectoral mobility of capital, the destination of FDI, the elasticities of substitution, and the factor intensities of the final good production.     

Capital Expansion, Endogenous Growth and Equilibrium Unemployment

A model is developed, which captures the interactions of unemployment and economic growth in general equilibrium. The economy evolves along a correct-expectations equilibrium path exhibiting endogenous job rationing, and productivity growth is driven by installation of new capital. Under the maintained hypothesis that the elasticity of substitution between capital and labour is less than unity, unemployment benefits are shown to shift up the whole path of equilibrium unemployment, leaving the economy with a higher natural rate of unemployment and lowering the long-run growth rate permanently. Investment tax credits financed by lump sum taxes on total income are capable of lowering the natural rate and raising the economy's growth rate.     

Imperfect Competition, Capital Shortages and Unemployment Persistence

We construct a model integrating the traditions of imperfect competition macroeconomics and real business cycles. For this we study a dynamic economy with optimizing households, firms and trade unions subject to stochastic shocks. We can derive closed form solutions for the behaviour of all agents. It is found that the combination of capital shortages and imperfect competition in labor markets can give rise to unemployment, and that this unemployment is quite persistent, even when the underlying shocks are not.     

Employment Subsidy with Capital Mobility

Most models of tax competition assume full employment. Yet, actually one often observes that fiscal competition, particularly when it is aimed at attracting investment, is motivated by the concern of fighting unemployment and enhancing job creation. The present paper considers a multicountry model with capital mobility and unemployment. Fiscal policy has two opposing objectives: financing unemployment insurance and increasing employment. In each country there is a majority vote on this policy.
The purpose of the paper is to analyse how opening borders to capital flows modifies the median voter's choice of the employment subsidy. Assuming that capital and labour are complements, economic integration is shown to raise the employment subsidy with fixed wages. This agrees with intuition as a larger employment subsidy attracts more capital. However, when wages are set by labour unions economic integration can change the median voter's choice in either direction.     

Egalitarian Wage Policies and Long-Term Unemployment

How does a centrally imposed egalitarian wage policy affect unemployment, when workers differ with respect to productivity? The effect on total unemployment is found to be ambiguous. Egalitarian wages encourage job creation because increased profits derived from the most productive workers more than outweigh reduced profits derived from the least productive workers. Short-term unemployment is reduced. On the other hand, firms respond by raising their reservation productivity. Some workers are left almost completely unemployable. Long-term unemployment rises. Less inequality in the wage distribution is obtained at the expense of more inequality in the distribution of unemployment.     

Eco-Dumping, Capital Mobility, and International Trade

A small open economy’s optimal environmental policy is studied in a model with international capital mobility and local pollution. The country produces traded as well as non-traded goods. Is it in the country’s interest to engage in ecological dumping by choosing generous pollution allowances for the traded-good sector? The answer depends decisively on the policy regime in use. Dumping is not optimal if the country ensures that the implicit rent on pollution is completely appropriated within the country. However, if the implicit factor reward on pollution leaves the country because it accrues to (foreign) owners of mobile capital, the local welfare maximizing government tends to discriminate against the traded-good sector, the opposite of ecological dumping.     

Labor Mobility, Trade, and Social Capital

Labor market integration raises welfare in the absence of distortions. This paper examines labor and goods market integration in a general‐equilibrium model with social capital. The findings are: (i) labor market integration has an ambiguous impact on welfare, and raises it if the goods and labor skills are sufficiently different; (ii) compared to Pareto optimum, labor mobility (social capital) is excessively large (depleted); (iii) trade is superior to labor market integration if trading costs are no higher than private migration costs, otherwise the outcome is ambiguous; and (iv) the creation of new institutions in response to labor market integration has an ambiguous impact on welfare.     

Capital Tax Competition and Cooperation with Endogenous Capital Formation

Incorporating consumption–savings choices under a general concave utility function and hence an endogenous capital supply into a model of capital tax competition, we re‐investigate Nash equilibrium and compare it with the optimum under cooperative tax policy. In contrast to the case of fixed capital supply, it is shown that if savings sufficiently increase with the interest rate, a Nash equilibrium may be more efficient than a cooperative tax policy. Therefore, the distortionary effects of capital supply are important to issues of tax policy coordination.     

资本集聚、税收互动与纵向税收竞争

依据2003—2007年中国26个省区269个城市的面板数据,通过构造3维误差成分结构的空间计量模型,以及工具变量两步sys-GMM估计、双重固定效应法和多重空间权重矩阵设置,本文发现政府层级之间存在显著的纵向税收外部性。这种互补性质的策略互动影响不同于西方理论考虑的具有充分和稳定税收管辖权的各级政府会由于共享税基产生交互影响,而是上级政府基于政治和行政权威,面向辖内下级政府实施的具有利维坦特征的税收驱赶和"挤压"影响,是一种纵向政府层级间的"税收竞争"。     

Capital Mobility, Agglomeration and Corporate Tax Rates: Is the Race to the Bottom for Real?

Based on a data set for 19 OECD countries for the period 1981–2001,we estimate the impact of FDI on corporate tax rates, wherechanges in FDI are a measure for changes in capital mobility.So far the literature has been concerned with the related butrather different question as to the sensitivity of FDI to taxrates. Our article takes an opposite perspective and asks whatthe impact of capital mobility is on corporate tax rates. Indoing so, we explicitly take the role of agglomeration intoaccount. In theory, core countries can afford a higher tax ratecompared to peripheral countries. In our estimation strategy,we instrument capital mobility to deal with reverse causality.The main conclusion is that increased international capitalmobility, measured by FDI flows, implies a lower corporate taxrate. But we also find that agglomeration matters: core countrieshave a higher corporate tax rate than peripheral countries.If there is a race to the bottom, it seems that it is more realfor some countries than others. (JEL code: H25)     

Employment Flows,Capital Mobility,and Policy Analysis

This article extends Hopenhayn and Rogerson's analysis of firing taxes by introducing a flexible form of capital and considering transitionary dynamics. The article finds that capital is not important for understanding the long run and welfare effects of firing taxes. However, capital is crucial for determining the short run consequences of eliminating this type of policy.     

Saving, Investment, and Capital Mobility in LDCs

The Coakley, Kulasi, and Smith current-account solvency model ( Economic Journal , 1996, pp. 620–7) is used to investigate saving and investment in LDCs. This model implies that saving and investment cointegrate with a unit coefficient irrespective of the degree of capital mobility. Panel and conventional unit-root tests indicate that LDC current accounts are stationary. The Feldstein–Horioka cross-section regression coefficient for LDCs is lower than the corresponding OECD coefficient, indicating different policy responses in these countries rather than higher capital mobility. Finally, adjustment toward solvency is slower in LDCs, reflecting their vulnerability to external shocks and the impact of financial repression.