Interregional Competition for Mobile Creative Capital with and Without Physical Capital Mobility

Abstract

A lacuna in the extant literature and our desire to contribute to the theoretical literature on how tax/subsidy policies can be used by regions to attract the creative class together provide the motivation for this paper. The paper’s basic contribution is that it is the first to theoretically analyze competition between two regions (1 and 2) for mobile creative capital, the key attribute possessed by the creative class. Both regions produce a final good using creative and physical capital. In the first case, physical capital is immobile and only region 2 uses tax policy to attract the mobile creative capital. We compute the equilibrium returns to creative and physical capital, we specify a key condition for creative capital in the aggregate economy, and we show which of three tax policies gives region 2 the highest income. In the second case, creative and physical capital are mobile and both regions pursue tax policies to attract mobile creative capital. Once again, we compute the equilibrium returns to creative and physical capital and then describe the optimal taxes for the two regions given that they wish to maximize regional income.