Theories of inter-jurisdictional tax and yardstick competition assume that the tax decisions of one jurisdiction will influence the tax decisions of other jurisdictions. This paper empirically addresses the issue of horizontal dependence in local personal income tax rates across jurisdictions. Based on a large data set covering Swedish municipalities over a period of 14 years, we test for interactions across municipalities that share a common border, across municipalities within a distance of 100 km of each other, and across municipalities with similar political representation in the local council. We also test the hypothesis that the tax rate of relatively larger municipalities has a greater influence on their neighbors' tax rate compared to the influence of their smaller neighbors. Our results suggest that when lagged tax rates are controlled for, the horizontal correlation across municipalities that share a common border or are within a distance of 100 km from each other becomes insignificant. This result is of importance as it suggests that lagged tax rates should be included or at least tested for when testing for horizontal interactions or mimicking in local tax rates. However, our results support the hypothesis of horizontal interactions across municipalities that share a common border when the influence of neighboring municipalities is also weighted by their relative population size, i.e. relatively larger neighbors tend to have a greater impact on their neighbor's tax rates than their relatively smaller neighbors. This is of importance as it suggests that distance or proximity matters, although only in combination with the relative population size. We also find some evidence of horizontal dependence across municipalities with similar political preferences.

跨管辖区税收和标准竞争的理论假设一个管辖区的税收决定会影响其他管辖区的税收决定。本文从经验上解决了跨辖区地方个人所得税税率水平依赖的问题。我们基于14年内涵盖瑞典市政当局的大型数据集，测试了具有共同边界的市政当局之间，彼此之间100公里以内的市政当局之间以及在当地具有类似政治代表权的市政当局之间的互动理事会。我们还检验了以下假设：相对较小的市镇，相对较大的市镇的税率对邻国的税率影响更大。我们的结果表明，当控制滞后税率时，共享共同边界或彼此相距100公里以内的城市之间的水平相关性变得微不足道。该结果非常重要，因为它建议在测试横向交互作用或模仿本地税率时应包括或至少测试滞后税率。但是，我们的结果支持以下假设：当相邻城市的影响力也由其相对人口规模来加权时，即共享相邻边界的各个城市之间的横向互动，即相对较大的邻国往往对其邻国的税率产生的影响要大于其相对邻国。较小的邻居。这很重要，因为它表明距离或接近性很重要，尽管仅结合相对人口规模。我们还发现一些证据表明，具有类似政治偏好的各个城市之间存在横向依赖。