Large and influential: Firm size and governments’ corporate tax rate choice
研究发现，辖区企业规模越大，当地政府越倾向于制定更有利于企业的税收政策，基于德国市政数据验证了企业规模分布对地方商业税率的影响。
Abstract Theory suggests that large firms are more likely to engage in lobbying behaviour and are geographically more mobile compared with smaller entities. Conditional on jurisdiction size, policy choices are thus predicted to depend on the shape of a jurisdiction's firm size distribution, with more business‐oriented policies being enacted if jurisdictions host large firms. The paper empirically tests this prediction using local business taxation in Germany as a testing ground. Exploiting rich and exogenous variation in municipalities’ firm size structures, we find evidence for an inverse relationship between the size of hosted entities and municipalities’ local business tax choices. The effect is statistically significant and quantitatively relevant, suggesting that the rising importance of large businesses may trigger shifts towards a more business‐friendly design of (tax) policies.