Income segregation and local progressive taxation: Empirical evidence from Switzerland

• 成果类型: Article; Proceedings Paper
• 署名作者: Schmidheiny, K
• 署名单位: Tufts University; Leibniz Association; Ifo Institut
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2005.09.003
• 发表日期: 2006
• 页码: 429-458
• 关键词: location choice; segregation; Fiscal federalism; progressive taxation; discrete choice; social interactions

摘要

This study investigates spatial income segregation in fiscally decentralized urban areas. The theoretical part proposes the progressivity of local income taxes as a new theoretical explanation for income segregation. The empirical part studies how income tax differentials across municipalities affect the households' location decisions. 1 use data from the Swiss metropolitan area of Basel that contains tax information on all moving households in 1997. The location choice of the households is investigated within the framework of the random utility maximization model. Different econometric specifications of the error term structure, such as conditional logit, nested logit and multinormal probit, are compared. The empirical results show that rich households are significantly and substantially more likely to move to low-tax municipalities than poor households. This result holds after controlling for alternative explanations of segregation. Social interactions and distance from the central business district are established as other major factors for income segregation. Households in general tend to choose locations close to other households like themselves. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.