IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/imf/imfwpa/2006-271.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Size Distribution of Firms, Cournot, and Optimal Taxation

Author

Listed:
  • Mr. Mark Gersovitz

Abstract

Tax laws and administrations often treat different size firms differently. There is, however, little research on the consequences. As modeled here, oligopolists with different efficiencies determine the size distribution of firms. A government that maximizes a weighted sum of consumer surplus, profits, and tax receipts can tax firms with different efficiencies differently and provides a reference point for other, more restricted differential tax systems. Taxes include a specific sales tax, an ad valorem sales tax, and a profits tax with imperfect deductibility of capital cost, and a combination of the last two. In general there is a pattern of tax rates by efficiency of firm. It is heavily dependent on the social valuation of tax receipts. Analytic and simulation results are provided. When both ad valorem taxes and the imperfect profits tax are combined, simulations suggest that the former rate is higher and the latter rate is lower for relatively inefficient firms.

Suggested Citation

  • Mr. Mark Gersovitz, 2006. "The Size Distribution of Firms, Cournot, and Optimal Taxation," IMF Working Papers 2006/271, International Monetary Fund.
    • Handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2006/271
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=20003
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Delipalla, Sofia & Keen, Michael, 1992. "The comparison between ad valorem and specific taxation under imperfect competition," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(3), pages 351-367, December.
    2. Desai, Mihir A. & Hines Jr., James R., 2008. "Market reactions to export subsidies," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(2), pages 459-474, March.
    3. Keen, Michael & Mintz, Jack, 2004. "The optimal threshold for a value-added tax," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(3-4), pages 559-576, March.
    4. Luís M B Cabral & José Mata, 2003. "On the Evolution of the Firm Size Distribution: Facts and Theory," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(4), pages 1075-1090, September.
    5. Bergstrom, Theodore C. & Varian, Hal R., 1985. "Two remarks on Cournot equilibria," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 19(1), pages 5-8.
    6. Robert E. Lucas Jr., 1978. "On the Size Distribution of Business Firms," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 9(2), pages 508-523, Autumn.
    7. Gareth Myles, 1996. "Imperfect competition and the optimal combination of ad valorem and specific taxation," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 3(1), pages 29-44, January.
    8. Kanbur, S M, 1979. "Of Risk Taking and the Personal Distribution of Income," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 87(4), pages 769-797, August.
    9. Greg Shaffer & Stephen W. Salant, 1999. "Unequal Treatment of Identical Agents in Cournot Equilibrium," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(3), pages 585-604, June.
    10. Leahy, Dermot & Montagna, Catia, 2001. "Strategic Trade Policy with Heterogeneous Costs," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(3), pages 177-182, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Langenmayr, Dominika & Haufler, Andreas & Bauer, Christian J., 2015. "Should tax policy favor high- or low-productivity firms?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 18-34.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Onji, Kazuki, 2009. "The response of firms to eligibility thresholds: Evidence from the Japanese value-added tax," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(5-6), pages 766-775, June.
    2. Wang, X. Henry & Zhao, Jingang, 2007. "Welfare reductions from small cost reductions in differentiated oligopoly," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 173-185, February.
    3. Lapan, Harvey E. & Hennessy, David A., 2007. "Unit Vs. Ad Valorem Taxes in Multi-Product Cournot Oligopoly," Staff General Research Papers Archive 12780, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    4. Wim Naudé, 2008. "Entrepreneurship in Economic Development," WIDER Working Paper Series RP2008-20, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    5. Alexander Monge-Naranjo, 2009. "Entrepreneurship and firm heterogeneity with limited enforcement," Annals of Finance, Springer, vol. 5(3), pages 465-494, June.
    6. Luc Laeven & Christopher Woodruff, 2007. "The Quality of the Legal System, Firm Ownership, and Firm Size," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 89(4), pages 601-614, November.
    7. Cristina Fernández & Roberta García & Paloma Lopez-Garcia & Benedicta Marzinotto & Roberta Serafini & Juuso Vanhala & Ladislav Wintr, 2017. "Firm growth in Europe: An overview based on the COMPNET labour module," BCL working papers 107, Central Bank of Luxembourg.
    8. Opromolla, Luca David & Dell’Era, Michele & Santos-Pinto, Luis, 2018. "A General Equilibrium Theory of Occupational Choice under Optimistic Beliefs about Entrepreneurial Ability," CEPR Discussion Papers 13225, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    9. Andrew B. Bernard & Stephen J. Redding & Peter K. Schott, 2006. "Multi-Product Firms and Product Switching," NBER Working Papers 12293, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. David R. Collie, 2019. "Taxation under oligopoly in a general equilibrium setting," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 21(4), pages 738-753, August.
    11. Long, Ngo Van & Soubeyran, Antoine, 2001. "Cost Manipulation Games in Oligopoly, with Costs of Manipulating," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 42(2), pages 505-533, May.
    12. Koen de Backer, 2002. "Does foreign direct investment crowd out domestic entrepreneurship?," Economics Working Papers 618, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    13. Neira, Julian, 2019. "Bankruptcy and cross-country differences in productivity," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 359-381.
    14. Geurts, Karen & Van Biesebroeck, Johannes, 2016. "Firm creation and post-entry dynamics of de novo entrants," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 59-104.
    15. Pedro Gomes & Zoe Kuehn, 2017. "Human capital and the size distribution of firms," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 26, pages 164-179, October.
    16. Richard J. Sullivan & Zhu Wang, 2005. "Internet banking: an exploration in technology diffusion and impact," Payments System Research Working Paper PSR WP 05-05, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
    17. Brian Wu & Anne Marie Knott, 2006. "Entrepreneurial Risk and Market Entry," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 52(9), pages 1315-1330, September.
    18. Newman, Andrew F., 2007. "Risk-bearing and entrepreneurship," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 137(1), pages 11-26, November.
    19. Lars Ivar Oppedal Berge & Armando José Garcia Pires, 2020. "Gender, formality, and entrepreneurial success," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 55(4), pages 881-900, December.
    20. Alex Coad, 2007. "Firm Growth: a Survey," Post-Print halshs-00155762, HAL.

    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:imf:imfwpa:2006/271. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Akshay Modi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/imfffus.html .

    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.