IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/repsxx/v8y2020i2p246-273.html

Fiscal illusion and progressive taxation with retrospective voting

Author

Listed:
  • Antonio Abatemarco
  • Roberto Dell’Anno

Abstract

This article addresses the tax progressivity decision of a rent-maximising government under the circumstances that voters’ perceptions of the tax price of public goods are biased by cognitive anomalies (i.e. fiscal illusion) and that the electorate opts for re-appointing or for dismissing the incumbent according to a retrospective voting logic. Given electoral and constitutional constraints, we show that the design of the tax system can be sensibly affected by fiscal illusion within the population of voters. Specifically, we find that (i) the tax system is more (less) progressive when taxes and public expenditures are perceived less (more), and (ii) an increase in the median voter’s income may positively or negatively affect tax progressivity depending on the nature (pessimistic or optimistic) of fiscal illusion. The impact of fiscal illusion on tax progressivity has been validated by econometric analysis.

Suggested Citation

  • Antonio Abatemarco & Roberto Dell’Anno, 2020. "Fiscal illusion and progressive taxation with retrospective voting," Economic and Political Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 8(2), pages 246-273, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:repsxx:v:8:y:2020:i:2:p:246-273
    DOI: 10.1080/20954816.2020.1728831
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/20954816.2020.1728831
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/20954816.2020.1728831?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory
    • H23 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Externalities; Redistributive Effects; Environmental Taxes and Subsidies
    • H3 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents

    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:taf:repsxx:v:8:y:2020:i:2:p:246-273. 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/reps .

    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.