Observed fiscal policy varies greatly across time and countries. How can we explain this variation? This paper surveys the recent literature that has tried to answer this question. We adopt a unified approach in portraying public policy as the equilibrium outcome of an explicitly specified political process. We divide the material into three parts. In Part I, we focus on median-voter equilibria that apply to policy issues where disagreement between voters is likely to be one-dimensional. We thus study the general redistributive programs, typical of the modern welfare state: redistribution between rich and poor, young and old, employed and unemployed, and labor and capital. In Part II we study special-interest politics. Here, the policy problem is multi-dimensional and we focus on specific political mechanisms: we study legislative bargaining, lobbying, and electoral competition, as well as the possible interactions between these different forms of political activity. Finally, in Part III we deal with "comparative politics", namely policy choice under alternative political constitutions. Here, we model the rationale for separation of powers; we also contrast stylized features of majoritarian and proportional electoral rules, as well as congressional and parliamentary political regimes, focusing on their implications for rent extraction by politicians, redistribution and public goods provision.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Publisher Info
Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML
(with abstract),
plain text
(with abstract),
BibTeX,
RIS (EndNote, RefMan, ProCite),
ReDIF This chapter was published in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.) Handbook of Public Economics, , chapter 24, pages 1549-1659, 2002.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Heidi Boesdal).
Related research
This chapter was published in the following book, which is listed on IDEAS: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), 2002.
"Handbook of Public Economics,"
Handbook of Public Economics,
Elsevier,
edition 1, volume 3, number 3, September.
[Downloadable!] (restricted) Keywords:
Find related papers by JEL classification: H0 - Public Economics - - General
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.) This item has more than 25 citations. To prevent cluttering this page, these citations are listed on a separate page.