Marie-Estelle Binet

Tax degression and the political budget cycle in French municipalities

This paper explores local incumbent behaviour during office. First, empirical evidence is given about the fiscal policy instruments by which French municipalities try to influence election outcome. Special care is taken about the econometric issues raised by the dynamic panel data setting. Secondly, a theoretical framework is built to investigate the political budget cycle when local taxation is degressive as in France. Its main results help understanding of the empirical findings.

Optimal local taxation and French municipal tax distortions

This article presents both theoretical and empirical findings in the field of optimal local taxation i.e. neutral in locational decision. This topic should throw light on the question of tax policy and tax reform. We extend Wildasins (1987) model, including mobile capital. In this way, we include his marginal cost of congestion taxation rule relating to mobile households (Proposition 1). This extension provides us with a new rule (Proposition 2): the optimal share-out of taxes among household residents and firms in municipalities. To illustrate these results, we discuss the French municipal tax system properties and we pick out its main distortions.

Diffusion of irrigation technologies: the role of mimicking behaviour and public incentives

We develop a conceptual framework designed to assess the impact of public incentives on the diffusion process of modern, water-saving irrigation technologies. Diffusion patterns of the integral sprinkler cover system in the sugarcane sector of Reunion Island (France) are estimated using a sample of 110 farmers aggregated over the period 1990 to 2006. We show that imitation is the main explanatory factor of the adoption dynamics. We also show that the characteristic diffusion path is not perfectly symmetric and is significantly affected by equipment subsidies.