IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ieb/wpaper/doc2010-8.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Should tax bases overlap in a federation with lobbying?

Author

Listed:
  • Alejandro Esteller-Moré

    (Universitat de Barcelona & IEB)

  • Umberto Galmarini

    (Università dell'Insubria)

  • Leonzio Rizzo

    (Università di Ferrara & IEB)

Abstract

We examine the tax assignment problem in a federation with two layers of government sharing an elastic tax base, in which Leviathan policy makers levy an excise tax in an imperfectly competitive market and producers lobby for tax rate cuts. If the lobby of producers is very influential on policy makers, we find that taxation by both layers of government might be optimal, provided that the market of the taxed good is highly concentrated; otherwise, it is optimal to assign the power to tax only to one level of government. Taxation by both layers of government is not optimal either when the influence of the lobby is weak, whatever the degree of market power. We also examine a richer set of tax setting outcomes, by considering the possibility that state policy makers have heterogeneous tax policy objectives.

Suggested Citation

  • Alejandro Esteller-Moré & Umberto Galmarini & Leonzio Rizzo, 2010. "Should tax bases overlap in a federation with lobbying?," Working Papers 2010/8, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    • Handle: RePEc:ieb:wpaper:doc2010-8
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://ieb.ub.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/2010-IEB-WorkingPaper-08.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Persson, Torsten, 1998. "Economic Policy and Special Interest Politics," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 108(447), pages 310-327, March.
    2. B. Douglas Bernheim & Michael D. Whinston, 1986. "Menu Auctions, Resource Allocation, and Economic Influence," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 101(1), pages 1-31.
    3. Grossman, Gene M & Helpman, Elhanan, 1994. "Protection for Sale," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(4), pages 833-850, September.
    4. Dahlby, Bev & Wilson, Leonard S., 2003. "Vertical fiscal externalities in a federation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(5-6), pages 917-930, May.
    5. Dixit, Avinash & Grossman, Gene M & Helpman, Elhanan, 1997. "Common Agency and Coordination: General Theory and Application to Government Policy Making," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(4), pages 752-769, August.
    6. Seade, J., 1985. "Profitable Cost Increases and the Shifting of Taxation: Equilibrium Responses of Markets in Oligopoly," Economic Research Papers 269225, University of Warwick - Department of Economics.
    7. Boadway, Robin & Marchand, Maurice & Vigneault, Marianne, 1998. "The consequences of overlapping tax bases for redistribution and public spending in a federation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(3), pages 453-478, June.
    8. Ilya Segal, 1999. "Contracting with Externalities," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(2), pages 337-388.
    9. Michael J. Keen & Christos Kotsogiannis, 2002. "Does Federalism Lead to Excessively High Taxes?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(1), pages 363-370, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sandro Brusco & Luca Colombo & Umberto Galmarini, 2010. "Local Governments Tax Autonomy, Lobbying, and Welfare," DISCE - Quaderni dell'Istituto di Economia e Finanza ief0097, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Dipartimenti e Istituti di Scienze Economiche (DISCE).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Esteller-Moré, Alejandro & Galmarini, Umberto & Rizzo, Leonzio, 2012. "Vertical tax competition and consumption externalities in a federation with lobbying," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(3), pages 295-305.
    2. Bordignon, Massimo & Colombo, Luca & Galmarini, Umberto, 2008. "Fiscal federalism and lobbying," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(12), pages 2288-2301, December.
    3. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 2002. "Political economics and public finance," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 24, pages 1549-1659, Elsevier.
    4. Bennedsen, Morten & Feldmann, Sven E., 2006. "Informational lobbying and political contributions," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(4-5), pages 631-656, May.
    5. Zudenkova, Galina, 2010. "Sincere Lobby Formation," Working Papers 2072/151545, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Department of Economics.
    6. Y. Hossein Farzin & Jinhua Zhao, 2003. "Pollution Abatement Investment When Firms Lobby Against Environmental Regulation," Working Papers 2003.82, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    7. Dutta, Rohan & Levine, David K. & Modica, Salvatore, 2018. "Damned if you do and damned if you don't: Two masters," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 177(C), pages 101-125.
    8. Laussel, Didier & Le Breton, Michel, 2001. "Conflict and Cooperation: The Structure of Equilibrium Payoffs in Common Agency," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 100(1), pages 93-128, September.
    9. Sandro Brusco & Luca Colombo & Umberto Galmarini, 2014. "Tax differentiation, lobbying, and welfare," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 42(4), pages 977-1006, April.
    10. Bennedsen, Morten, 2000. "Political ownership," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(3), pages 559-581, June.
    11. Josip Lesica, 2018. "Lobbying For Minimum Wages," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 56(4), pages 2027-2057, October.
    12. Georgios Chortareas & Stephen Miller, 2004. "Optimal Central Banker Contracts and Common Agency," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 121(1), pages 131-155, October.
    13. Dharmapala, Dhammika, 1999. "Comparing tax expenditures and direct subsidies: the role of legislative committee structure," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(3), pages 421-454, June.
    14. Fredriksson, Per & Mamun, Khawaja, 2009. "Gubernatorial Reputation and Vertical Tax Externalities: All Smoke, No Fire?," Working Papers 2009002, Sacred Heart University, John F. Welch College of Business.
    15. John Boyce, 2010. "Putting Foxes in Charge of the Hen-House: The Political Economy of Harvest Quota Regulations," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 46(4), pages 475-493, August.
    16. Bennedsen, Morten, 1999. "Political Ownership," Working Papers 11-1999, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Economics.
    17. Giorgio Bellettini & Carlotta Berti Ceroni, 2005. "When the Union Hurts the Workers: A Positive Analysis of Immigration Policy," CESifo Working Paper Series 1421, CESifo.
    18. Han, Seungjin, 2006. "Menu theorems for bilateral contracting," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 131(1), pages 157-178, November.
    19. Gaoussou Diarra & Sébastien Marchand, 2011. "Environmental Compliance, Corruption and Governance: Theory and Evidence on Forest Stock in Developing Countries," Working Papers halshs-00557677, HAL.
    20. Leonardo Felli & Antonio Merlo, 2006. "Endogenous Lobbying," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 4(1), pages 180-215, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    vertical tax externalities; tax assignment; lobbying; specific taxation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H71 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue
    • H77 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - Intergovernmental Relations; Federalism
    • D70 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ieb:wpaper:doc2010-8. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iebubes.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.