Free entry and regulatory competition in a global economy

This paper examines the optimal entry policy toward oligopoly in a global economy. We show that free entry results in too much competition for the world, but each country's corrective tax policy, unless internationally coordinated, proves suboptimal because of international policy spillovers. Thus, globalization prevents countries from pursuing the optimal entry policy. However, globalization also generates the gains from trade. When countries are small, the gains from trade dominate the losses from a suboptimal entry policy, but as markets grow the result is reversed, making trade inferior to autarky. Therefore, the need for tax harmonization grows as the world economy grows. This paper also contributes to the international tax competition literature through the discovery of the reverse home market effect. •We examine the optimal entry policy toward oligopoly in a globalized world.•Free entry results in too much competition for the world.•Globalization prevents countries from pursuing the optimal entry policy.•For small countries, trade gains dominate the losses from a suboptimal entry policy.•As markets grow the result is reversed, making trade inferior to autarky.