Voting under ignorance of job skills of unemployed: the overtaxation bias

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Laslier, JF; Trannoy, A; Van der Straeten, K
• 署名单位: Institut Polytechnique de Paris; Ecole Polytechnique; heSam Universite; Conservatoire National Arts & Metiers (CNAM); Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); CY Cergy Paris Universite
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/S0047-2727(01)00105-0
• 发表日期: 2003
• 页码: 595-626
• 关键词: taxation; unemployment; voting

摘要

Usual models on voting over basic income-flat tax schedules rest on the assumption that voters know the whole distribution of skills even if at equilibrium some individuals do not work. If individuals' productivity remains unknown until they work, it may be more convincing to assume that voters have only beliefs about the distribution of skills and that a learning process takes place. In this paper, at each period, individuals vote according to their beliefs which are updated when getting new information from the job market. The voting process converges towards some steady-state equilibrium that depends on both the true distribution of skills and the initial beliefs. The equilibrium tax rate is higher than (or equal to) the tax rate achieved in the perfect information framework. An illustration is provided on French data: if voters are over-pessimistic as to the potential productivity of unemployed people, majority voting may lock the economy in an informational trap with a high tax rate and a high level of inactivity. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.