Is Competition for FDI Bad for Regional Welfare?

Oscar Amerighi () and Giuseppe De Feo

Working Papers from Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna

Abstract: We investigate the impact on regional welfare of policy competition for FDI when a multinational firm can strategically react to differences in statutory corporate tax rates and shift taxable profits to lower-tax jurisdictions. We show that competing governments may have an incentive to tax discriminate between domestic and multinational firms even in the presence of profit shifting opportunities for the latter. In particular, tax competition leads to higher welfare for the region as a whole than lump-sum subsidy competition when the difference in statutory corporate tax rates and/or their average is high enough. We also find that policy competition increases regional welfare by changing the firm's investment decision when profit shifting motivations might induce the firm to locate in the least profitable country.

JEL-codes: F23 H25 H26 H32 H73 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-10
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bol:bodewp:680

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