Decentralization and Tax Competition between Asymmetrical Local Governments: Theoretical and Empirical Evidence

This article presents a model of tax competition between an arbitrarily large number of asymmetrical jurisdictions. Tax competition induces lower corporate taxes and lower public input provision than does tax coordination. This bias decreases with respect to the size and number of jurisdictions. Tax competition constitutes a cost of decentralization that may balance the gains presented by the decentralization theorem. A French panel of municipalities and intermunicipal jurisdictions is used to test these results, which are confirmed. Furthermore, the corporate tax increase due to cooperation leads to an increase in the corporate tax base: the fully decentralized situation is suboptimal.