Leadership in Tax Competition with Fiscal Equalization Transfers

Abstract

We propose a timing game of asymmetric tax competition with fiscal equalization scheme. The study finds that governments tend to play a sequential-move game as the scale of equalization transfer increases, which explains the emergence of tax leaders in tax competition. The presence of a tax leader is likely to exacerbate capital misallocation among countries, suggesting that equalization transfers aimed at narrowing the interregional fiscal gap might cause an inefficient capital allocation.