IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/pubcho/v103y2000i3-4p357-82.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Political Economy of Tax Coordination as a Bargaining Game between Bureaucrats and Politicians

Author

Listed:
  • Fuest, Clemens

Abstract

In the public finance literature, the view prevails that tax competition among countries gives rise to an underprovision of public goods and that coordinated tax increases are therefore desirable. Public choice arguments, in contrast, suggest that tax coordination may not be in the interest of the taxpayers/citizens because imperfections of the political process (political distortions) may lead to a waste of tax money. According to this view, tax competition is a desirable check on the power to tax whereas tax coordination would only relax the budget constraint of an inefficient public sector. The present paper integrates the underprovision argument and the public choice view into a common theoretical framework. The government is assumed to consist of politicians and bureaucrats with diverging interests. Fiscal policy is modelled as the outcome of a bargaining game between the bureaucrats and the politicians. It turns out that coordinated tax increases always raise the provision of public goods but also increase the cost of political distortions. The effect on the welfare of the representative citizen may be positive or negative, depending in particular on the distribution of bargaining power between bureaucrats and politicians. Copyright 2000 by Kluwer Academic Publishers

Suggested Citation

  • Fuest, Clemens, 2000. "The Political Economy of Tax Coordination as a Bargaining Game between Bureaucrats and Politicians," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 103(3-4), pages 357-382, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:103:y:2000:i:3-4:p:357-82
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://journals.kluweronline.com/issn/0048-5829/contents
    File Function: link to full text
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Michael Christl & Monika Köppl–Turyna, 2018. "Tax competition and the political economy of public employment: a model for Austria," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 45(3), pages 607-638, August.
    2. repec:rre:publsh:v:35:y:2005:i:3:p:246-65 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Marcus Drometer, 2006. "Hyperbolic Discounting and Politics: The beneficial effects of bureaucrats," Working Papers 008, Bavarian Graduate Program in Economics (BGPE).
    4. Alejandro Esteller-Moré, 2011. "Is the tax administration just a money machine? Empirical evidence on redistributive politics," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 12(3), pages 275-299, September.
    5. Eggert, Wolfgang & Sørensen, Peter Birch, 2008. "The effects of tax competition when politicians create rents to buy political support," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(5-6), pages 1142-1163, June.
    6. Katharina Holzinger, 2003. "Tax Competition and Tax Co-operation in the EU: The Case of Savings Taxation," EUI-RSCAS Working Papers 7, European University Institute (EUI), Robert Schuman Centre of Advanced Studies (RSCAS).
    7. Clemens Fuest & Bernd Huber & Jack Mintz, 2003. "Capital Mobility and Tax Competition: A Survey," CESifo Working Paper Series 956, CESifo.
    8. Marcus Drometer, 2012. "Bureaucrats and short-term politics," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 151(1), pages 149-163, April.
    9. Eggert, Wolfgang, 2001. "Capital tax competition with socially wasteful government consumption," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 517-529, September.
    10. Feld, Lars P, 2000. "Tax Competition and Income Redistribution: An Empirical Analysis for Switzerland," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 105(1-2), pages 125-164, October.
    11. Fuest, Clemens & Huber, Bernd, 2001. "Tax Competition and Tax Coordination in a Median Voter Model," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 107(1-2), pages 97-113, April.
    12. Fuest, Clemens & Huber, Bernd, 2001. "Why is there so little tax coordination? The role of majority voting and international tax evasion," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(2-3), pages 299-317, April.
    13. Brückner, Matthias, 2001. "Strategic delegation and international capital taxation," ZEI Working Papers B 22-2001, University of Bonn, ZEI - Center for European Integration Studies.
    14. Katharina Holzinger, 2005. "Tax Competition and Tax Co-Operation in the EU," Rationality and Society, , vol. 17(4), pages 475-510, November.
    15. J. Aronson & James Dearden & Vincent Munley, 2009. "The impact of surplus sharing on the portfolio mix of public sector defined benefit pension plans: a public choice approach," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 140(1), pages 161-184, July.

    More about this item

    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:kap:pubcho:v:103:y:2000:i:3-4:p:357-82. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.