This study explores the effects of asymmetric information on endogenous leadership in a simple tax competition environment. The study models a two-country economy where one country is informed about its own and opponent's productivity of private goods, while the other country only knows its productivity. The results show that each type of informed country has an incentive to pretend to be the other type, which leads to a Stackelberg outcome endogenously, while the simultaneous move is the unique outcome under complete information. Under the Stackelberg outcome, the uninformed country moves first and the informed country moves second. Moreover, ex-post social welfare under asymmetric information can become larger than that under complete information, because the uninformed country chooses a less aggressive tax rate under asymmetric information. These results depend on the type of uncertainty, and capital ownership and share.

中文翻译：

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税收竞争中的内生时机：信息不对称的影响

本研究探讨了在简单的税收竞争环境中，信息不对称对内生领导力的影响。该研究模拟了一个两国经济，其中一个国家了解自己和对手的私人物品生产率，而另一个国家只知道自己的生产率。结果表明，每种类型的知情国家都有动机伪装成另一种类型，这会内生地导致 Stackelberg 结果，而同步移动是完全信息下的唯一结果。根据 Stackelberg 的结果，不知情的国家先行动，知情的国家第二。此外，信息不对称下的事后社会福利可能比完全信息下的社会福利更大，因为信息不对称的国家在信息不对称下选择了不太激进的税率。