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Taxes, Public Goods, and the Ruling Class: An Exploration of the Territory between Brennan and Buchanan's Leviathan and Conventional Public Finance

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  • Engineer, Merwan

Abstract

Alternative theories of government behavior yield conflicting prescriptions for public finance, ranging from Paul Samuelson's (1954) well-known rule for the provision of the public good to Geoffrey Brennan and James M. Buchanan's (1977) "Tax Constitution for Leviathan". This paper presents a framework that subsumes these rules as polar cases. At one pole, where everybody is a member of the ruling class, it is in the public interest for the rulers to use a comprehensive and efficient excise tax base. At the opposite pole, where there is only one ruler, the subjects' interests are best defended by means of a restricted and inefficient tax base that enables subjects to substitute away from goods that are heavily taxed--Brennan and Buchanan's "Tax Constitution for Leviathan".

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  • Engineer, Merwan, 1989. "Taxes, Public Goods, and the Ruling Class: An Exploration of the Territory between Brennan and Buchanan's Leviathan and Conventional Public Finance," Public Finance = Finances publiques, , vol. 44(1), pages 19-30.
    • Handle: RePEc:pfi:pubfin:v:44:y:1989:i:1:p:19-30
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    Cited by:

    1. Stergios Skaperdas & Samarth Vaidya, 2020. "Why did pre-modern states adopt Big-God religions?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 182(3), pages 373-394, March.

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