Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/120556 
Year of Publication: 
2012
Series/Report no.: 
52nd Congress of the European Regional Science Association: "Regions in Motion - Breaking the Path", 21-25 August 2012, Bratislava, Slovakia
Publisher: 
European Regional Science Association (ERSA), Louvain-la-Neuve
Abstract: 
The identification of strategic interactions among local governments is typically plagued by endogeneity problems. This paper proposes a quasi-experimental strategy to identify independent personal income tax setting by Swiss municipalities making use of the multi-tier federal system. State (cantonal) borders spatially bound the effects of canton-level fiscal reforms in areas that are otherwise highly integrated. Fiscal reforms at the canton level provide an exogenous source of variation in municipal tax rates, and are thus a valid instrument to identify strategic interactions among municipalities located at a cantonal border. In contrast to most of the existing empirical literature, I find that tax reaction functions have a negative slope and that taxes rates are strategic substitutes rather than strategic complements. This is compatible with a model of local tax setting in which governments primarily target expenditure rather than tax receipts.
Subjects: 
tax competition
fiscal federalism
JEL: 
H24
H71
H77
Document Type: 
Conference Paper

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