In a decentralised tax system, the effects of tax policies enacted by one government are not confined to its own jurisdiction. First, if the tax base is mobile, tax rate increases by one regional government will raise the amount of taxes collected by other regional governments (horizontal tax externality). Second, if both the regional and the federal levels of government co-occupy the same fields of taxation, tax rate increases by one layer of government will reduce taxes collected by the other (vertical tax externality). Third, as Smart (1998) shows, if equalisation transfers are present, an increase in the standard equalisation tax rate provides incentives to raise taxes to the receiving provinces. In order to check the empirical relevance of these hypotheses, this paper estimates provincial tax setting functions with data on Canadian personal income taxation for the period 1982- 96. We find a significant positive response of provincial tax rates to changes in the federal income tax rate, the tax rates of competing provinces, and the standard equalisation rate (only for receiving provinces). We also find that the reaction to horizontal competition is stronger in the provinces that do not receive equalisation transfers.

The main purpose of this paper is to analyse the relationship between innovative capacity and the presence of innovative inputs at a geographical level in Spain. Within the framework of a Griliches-Jaffe knowledge production function the effects of university research on corporate patents in four high and medium technology sectors are explored. In contrast to other studies carried out on this subject in the United States, the results do not provide evidence, except in the electronics industry, to support a positive relationship between university research and regional innovation

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the dynamics of the per capita GDP over the period 1961-1997 for the Spanish provinces. To avoid issues linked to the cross-sectional regression and the time series approaches, a non-parametric density estimation approach is instead used. The main goal is to show that Spanish provinces had a convergence dynamics during years, but a divergent one in the last decades. After a period of convergence during the sixties and part of the seventies, evidence in favour of intra- groups convergence (or polarization of income) is found during the eighties, and a starting process of divergence and increasing polarization among groups (clustering) is found for the last period analysed (1991-1997). Moreover, the inter-distributional dynamics are analysed for the Spanish provinces, presenting how the provinces have evolved during this period.

It is assumed that human capital external economies can increase factor productivity. However, as human capital is accumulated in an unequal way in the territory, productivity improvements will be different among territories. So, in the presence of labour mobility, wage differences will induce migratory movements that would concentrate population in a given geographical area and increasing housing rents until the net advantage of residing and working in different places is equal. In this paper we estimate wage and housing rents equations following Rauch (1993) model using microdata from the EPF 1990/91. The results offer evidence of local human capital external economies for the Spanish economy.

We present a model for measuring spillovers resulting from local expenditure policies. We identify and test for three different types of budget spillovers: (i) benefit spillovers from the production of local public goods, (ii) externalities in crowding, caused by non-resident users of public facilities, and (iii) externalities from expenditure competition effects. In order to account for these types of spillovers, we specify a demand of public goods with interactions among local governments. The model is tested for different expenditure categories with a cross-section of data from municipalities of the metropolitan area of Barcelona. We find positive benefit spillovers in spending in Cultural and Sports facilities, and in Parks and Streets maintenance. Externalities in crowding appear in spending on Police, Cultural and Sports facilities, Parks and Streets maintenance, and Street cleaning, Water delivery and Sanitation. Spending on Social services seems to be affected by competition externalities, while there is no evidence of spillovers in the expenditure on General Administration.

The aim of this article is to analyse the technical efficiency and cost- efficiency of the refuse collection services in 73 municipalities located in Catalonia, Spain. The analysis has been carried out using a modification of the DEA model in three stages developed by Fried and Lovell (1996), that allows to take into account the influence of those factors that the producer cannot control (non-controllable variables). The results seem to back the hypothesis that non-controllable variables do not affect very much the ease of provision of the service, with the exception of few municipalities.