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Multidimensional income taxation and electoral competition: an equilibrium analysis

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Author Info
Oriol Carbonell-Nicolau () (Rutgers University)
Efe Ok () (New York University)

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Abstract

One of the fundamental problems of the positive theory of income taxation is explaining why the statutory income tax schedules in all industrialized democracies are marginal-rate progressive. While it is commonly believed that this is but a simple consequence of the fact that the number of relatively poor voters exceeds that of richer voters in such societies, putting this contention in a voting equilibrium context proves to be a nontrivial task. We study the Downsian model in the context of nonlinear taxation and inquire about the possibility of providing a formal argument in support of the aforementioned intuition. We first show existence of mixed strategy equilibria and then ask qualitative questions about the nature of these equilibria. Our positive results show that there are cases where marginal-rate progressive taxes are chosen with probability one by the political parties. Our negative results show that, if the tax policy space is not artificially constrained, equilibria exist whose support does not lie within the set of all marginal-rate progressive taxes.

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Paper provided by Rutgers University, Department of Economics in its series Departmental Working Papers with number 200407.

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Length: 20 pages
Date of creation: 12 Apr 2004
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Handle: RePEc:rut:rutres:200407

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Related research
Keywords: marginal-rate progressive taxation; electoral competition; mixed strategy equilibrium;

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Models of Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

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References listed on IDEAS
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.:
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  2. Roberts, Kevin W. S., 1977. "Voting over income tax schedules," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 329-340, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  5. Jeffrey S. Banks & John Duggan & Michel LeBreton, . "Bounds for Mixed Strategy Equilibria and the Spatial Model of Elections," Wallis Working Papers WP14, University of Rochester - Wallis Institute of Political Economy. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  6. Osborne, Martin J. & Pitchik, Carolyn, 1983. "Price Competition in a Capacity-Constrained Duopoly," Working Papers 83-08, C.V. Starr Center for Applied Economics, New York University. [Downloadable!]
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  7. Philip J. Reny, 1999. "On the Existence of Pure and Mixed Strategy Nash Equilibria in Discontinuous Games," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 67(5), pages 1029-1056, September.
  8. Carbonell-Nicolau, Oriol & Klor, Esteban F., 2003. "Representative democracy and marginal rate progressive income taxation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(5-6), pages 1137-1164, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  9. Gouveia, Miguel & Oliver, David, 1996. "Voting over flat taxes in an endowment economy," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 50(2), pages 251-258, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  10. Marhuenda, Francisco & Ortuno-Ortin, Ignacio, 1998. "Income taxation, uncertainty and stability," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 285-300, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  11. Alessandro Lizzeri, 2000. "The Drawbacks of Electoral Competition," Econometric Society World Congress 2000 Contributed Papers 0898, Econometric Society. [Downloadable!]
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  12. Mitra, Tapan & Ok, Efe A, 1996. "Personal Income Taxation and the Principle of Equal Sacrifice Revisited," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 37(4), pages 925-48, November.
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  13. Jackson, Matthew O. & Jeroen Swinkels, 2004. "Existence of Equilibrium in Single and Double Private Value Auctions," Working Papers 1192, California Institute of Technology, Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences. [Downloadable!]
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  14. Tan, Kok-Keong & Yu, Jian & Yuan, Xian-Zhi, 1995. "Existence Theorems of Nash Equilibria for Non-cooperative N-Person Games," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer, vol. 24(3), pages 217-22.
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  16. Simon, Leo K & Zame, William R, 1990. "Discontinuous Games and Endogenous Sharing Rules," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 58(4), pages 861-72, July. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  17. Esteban F. Klor, 2003. "On the Popular Support for Progressive Taxation," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 5(4), pages 593-604, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  18. Jean-FranÚois Laslier, 2000. "Interpretation of electoral mixed strategies," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer, vol. 17(2), pages 283-292. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  19. Baye, Michael R & Tian, Guoqiang & Zhou, Jianxin, 1993. "Characterizations of the Existence of Equilibria in Games with Discontinuous and Non-quasiconcave Payoffs," Review of Economic Studies, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 60(4), pages 935-48, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  22. Laslier, Jean-Francois & Picard, Nathalie, 2002. "Distributive Politics and Electoral Competition," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 103(1), pages 106-130, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  23. Romer, Thomas, 1975. "Individual welfare, majority voting, and the properties of a linear income tax," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 4(2), pages 163-185, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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(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.)

  1. Jean-François Laslier, 2006. "Ambiguity in Electoral Competition," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 7(2), pages 195-210, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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