Global Corporate Income Tax Competition, Knowledge Spillover, and Growth

In a two-country model of endogenous growth with international knowledge spillover, corporate income tax competition reproduces the second-best allocation attained by tax harmonization, despite complex externalities. This stems from the positive spillover effect across the border and free trading by Ricardian households in the global financial market. However, such a neutrality result does not hold in the extended model, which includes non-Ricardian households. The equilibrium tax rate under the corporate income tax competition can be excessively high or low, depending on the elasticity of the spillover effect to the share of the firms’ locations