{"title":"Government incentives and firm location choices","authors":"Donghyuk Kim, Byoungmin Yu","doi":"10.1007/s11127-024-01197-7","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>We study the welfare impact of states competing with non-discretionary incentives for firms in an industry. A simple model of state competition and firm location choice enables welfare calculation with the first-order condition for incentives and firm profit function parameters. The model implies that state values for firms must be substantially heterogeneous and negatively correlated with firm profits for state competition to improve welfare. In an application to the craft brewing industry, we estimate the profit function by instrumenting endogenous incentives with a proxy for past lobbying activities of brewers in other states. We find that state competition mostly transfers tax dollars to firms without changing their geography. This is because firm profits vary more than state values, even though states with lower firm profits value firms more.</p>","PeriodicalId":48322,"journal":{"name":"Public Choice","volume":"50 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6000,"publicationDate":"2024-08-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Public Choice","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-024-01197-7","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
We study the welfare impact of states competing with non-discretionary incentives for firms in an industry. A simple model of state competition and firm location choice enables welfare calculation with the first-order condition for incentives and firm profit function parameters. The model implies that state values for firms must be substantially heterogeneous and negatively correlated with firm profits for state competition to improve welfare. In an application to the craft brewing industry, we estimate the profit function by instrumenting endogenous incentives with a proxy for past lobbying activities of brewers in other states. We find that state competition mostly transfers tax dollars to firms without changing their geography. This is because firm profits vary more than state values, even though states with lower firm profits value firms more.
期刊介绍:
Public Choice deals with the intersection between economics and political science. The journal was founded at a time when economists and political scientists became interested in the application of essentially economic methods to problems normally dealt with by political scientists. It has always retained strong traces of economic methodology, but new and fruitful techniques have been developed which are not recognizable by economists. Public Choice therefore remains central in its chosen role of introducing the two groups to each other, and allowing them to explain themselves through the medium of its pages.
Officially cited as: Public Choice