IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/jeczfn/v145y2025i1d10.1007_s00712-024-00890-x.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The beach: tourism tax competition along the Italian coasts

Author

Listed:
  • Chiara Cavallero

    (Intesa Sanpaolo)

  • Martin Zagler

    (UPO University of Eastern Piedmont
    WU Vienna University of Economics and Business)

Abstract

This paper investigates how tourism taxes are used by municipalities to attract tourists. We analyze how municipalities compete among each other, explicitly accounting for the spatial dimension. This paper provides a novel contribution to the literature on tax competition by explicitly modeling and testing the spatial dimension. First, we present a spatial model of tax competition, which is an adoption of the Hotelling model of imperfect competition in the linear city. We find that tax rates are strategic complements, as a change in taxes of one town will lead to a similar change of tax rates in neighboring towns. Second, we test the model with data from tourism taxes along the Italian coastline. We find that towns on the Tyrrhenian coast loose tourists to municipalities in the (south)east, if those reduce their tourism tax rate, and compete by lowering their own tax rates with respect to towns in the (north)west. We do not find similar behavior along the Adriatic coast.

Suggested Citation

  • Chiara Cavallero & Martin Zagler, 2025. "The beach: tourism tax competition along the Italian coasts," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 145(1), pages 77-96, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:jeczfn:v:145:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1007_s00712-024-00890-x
    DOI: 10.1007/s00712-024-00890-x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00712-024-00890-x
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s00712-024-00890-x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:jeczfn:v:145:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1007_s00712-024-00890-x. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.