Workshop on Tax competition: how to meet the normative and political challenge

Workshop at the Université de Montréal,
organised in collaboration with the Centre de recherche en éthique de l’Université de Montréal (CREUM)

Download the last version of the programme or a copy of the poster.

On the back of technological change and the end of exchange controls, capital mobility has over the last 30 or so years led to increasing tax competition. By lowering tax rates on individual savings as well as on corporate income, governments hope to attract portfolio investment and productive capital to their constituencies. Empirical research has shown that individual countries do not always benefit from tax competition, but might gain from cooperation. In determining what form this cooperation should take, two questions are of central importance:

  1. What are the normative principles that should underlie such international cooperation on fiscal policy? Simultaneously, what other, conflicting normative principles does such international cooperation have to respect?
  2. Which policies stand the best chance of implementing the selected normative principles in practice?

The aim of the workshop is to critically assess existing answers to these questions and potentially to come up with new solutions. In bringing together researchers from economics, law, and philosophy, the workshop hopes to build on synergies between the different perspectives of these disciplines that have not been previously seized upon.

Participants

| Reuven Avi-Yonah
(Law School, University of Michigan) | Abstract |
| Navot Bar
(Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP) | Abstract |
| Ilan Benshalom
(Visiting Assistant Professor Northwestern School of Law) | Abstract |
| Kimberley Brooks
(Faculty of Law, McGill University) | Abstract |
| Clément Carbonnier
(Economics, Université de Cergy-Pontoise) | Abstract |
| François Claveau
(graduate student, Universiteit van Rotterdam) | Abstract |
| Arthur Cockfield
(Faculty of Law, Queen’s University) | Abstract |
| Peter Dietsch
(Philosophy, Université de Montréal) | Abstract |
| David Duff
(Faculty of Law, University of Toronto) | Abstract |
| Philipp Genschel
(Political Science, Jacobs University Bremen) | Abstract |
| Richard Murphy
(Tax Justice Network, UK) | Abstract |
| Igor Paunovic
(Comision Economica para América Latina y el Caribe) | Abstract |
| Diane Ring
(Law School, Boston College) | Abstract |
| Thomas Rixen
(Social Science Research Centre Berlin, WZB) | Abstract |
| Ulrich van Suntum & Andreas Westermeier
(Economics, University of Mà¼nster) | Abstract |
| Jean-Pierre Vidal
(HEC Montréal) | Abstract |
| Michael Webb
(Political Science, University of Victoria) | Abstract |

where and when

August 28-29, 2008
Université de Montréal
Faculté de droit
Pavillon Maximilien-Caron
Salon des professeurs (room A-3464)

information

Peter Dietsch
Professor
Département de philosophpie
Université de Montréal
peter.dietsch@umontreal.ca

Call for papers ended April 30th, 2008, participants had to sent a 750 words detailed abstract and a short CV to Peter Dietsch.