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Taxes or Fees? The Political Economy of Providing Excludable Public Goods

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  • Kurtis J. Swope
  • Eckhard Janeba

Abstract

This paper provides a positive analysis of public provision of excludable public goods financed by uniform taxes or fees. Individuals differing in preferences decide using majority-rule the provision level and financing instrument. The median preference individual is the decisive voter in a tax regime, while an individual with preferences above the median generally determines the fee in a fee regime. Numerical solutions indicate that populations with uniform or left-skewed distributions of preferences choose taxes, while a majority coalition of high and low preference individuals prefer fees when preferences are sufficiently right-skewed. Public good provision under fees exceeds that under taxes in the latter case.

Suggested Citation

  • Kurtis J. Swope & Eckhard Janeba, 2001. "Taxes or Fees? The Political Economy of Providing Excludable Public Goods," CESifo Working Paper Series 542, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_542
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

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    2. George Economides & Apostolis Philippopoulos, 2020. "On the Provision of Excludable Public Goods - General Taxes or User Prices?," CESifo Working Paper Series 8724, CESifo.
    3. Economides, George & Philippopoulos, Apostolis & Sakkas, Stelios, 2017. "Tuition fees: User prices and private incentives," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 91-103.
    4. Kemnitz Alexander, 2013. "A Simple Model of Health Insurance Competition," German Economic Review, De Gruyter, vol. 14(4), pages 432-448, December.
    5. George Economides & Apostolis Philippopoulos, 2012. "Are User Fees Really Regressive?," CESifo Working Paper Series 3875, CESifo.
    6. Fuest, Clemens & Kolmar, Martin, 2007. "A theory of user-fee competition," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(3-4), pages 497-509, April.
    7. Clemens Fuest & Martin Kolmar, 2013. "Endogenous free riding and the decentralized user-fee financing of spillover goods in a n-region economy," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 20(2), pages 169-191, April.

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