Political competition and Mirrleesian income taxation: A first pass

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Bierbrauer, Felix J.; Boyer, Pierre C.
• 署名单位: University of Cologne; University of Mannheim
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2013.03.007
• 发表日期: 2013
• 页码: 1-14
• 关键词: political competition; redistributive politics; Non-linear income taxation

摘要

We study political competition in a simple Mirrleesian model of income taxation. The analysis is made tractable by exploiting the mechanism design formulation of the Mirrleesian problem. We consider basic variants of the Downsian model such as vote-share maximizing politicians, a winner-take-all system, and competition among politicians who differ in a quality dimension. We focus on the welfare implications of political competition and its implications for tax rates. In particular, we clarify the conditions under which equilibrium tax policies are Pareto-efficient and the conditions under which political failures in the sense of Besley and Coate (1998) arise. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.