Le mimétisme fiscal : une application aux Régions françaises

Abstract

Tax Mimicking : an Application to the French Regions. Yardstick competition has recently gained attention in the analysis of tax interactions among regional or local governments. Voters compare the tax policy of their government to those of neighbouring jurisdictions in order to evaluate the tax efficiency of their representatives. This may induce the latter to adopt the policy of other jurisdictions. The difference with tax competition is that ‘mimicking’may also lead to a convergence of tax rates at a level higher than the competitive one. In this paper, such a model of yardstick competition is developed and empirically tested using data for tax-setting behaviour of the French regions since the decentralisation process.