EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Regional Integration, Subsidy Competition and the Relocation Choice of MNCs

Facundo Albornoz () and Gregory Corcos
Additional contact information
Gregory Corcos: NHH - Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration

The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, 2007, vol. 7, issue 1

Abstract: Regional integration makes relocation a more attractive option for Multinational Corporations (MNC), influencing in turn the provision of investment incentives by member countries. We examine in this context the effects of subsidy competition. To do so, we model the strategic interaction between two governments offering subsidies to a MNC facing different location alternatives, which involve relocation and plant closure. Our welfare analysis shows that the combination of regional integration and subsidy competition may lead to suboptimally high levels of subsidization. We also discuss how the desirability of harmonizing subsidies (by banning them), and the net gains from integration crucially depend on technological differences, ownership, and on corporate tax rates. For instance, a simple agreement on avoiding subsidies generally raises welfare if the MNC belongs to an extra-regional country. This is not the case for a regional MNC. Lastly, we find that the gain from regional subsidy coordination increases with integration.

Keywords: multinational corporations; regional integration; FDI; subsidy competition; location choice (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F15 F21 F23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1641&context=bejeap (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:bejeap:v:7:y:2007:i:1:n:1

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy from Berkeley Electronic Press
Series data maintained by Avi Warner ().

 
Page updated 2009-11-25
Handle: RePEc:bpj:bejeap:v:7:y:2007:i:1:n:1