IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/car/carecp/00-12.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Rules, Politics and the Normative Analysis of Taxation

Author

Abstract

Taxation has been a much-discussed subject in the literature on economics and in writings on the role and meaning of the state. Over the centuries, many authors have put forward views of what qualifies as "good" taxation and what constitutes undesirable tax policy. Consensus on these issues has changed over time, depending on historical circumstances and prevailing modes of economic thinking. In this chapter, we look at analytical views that enjoy broad acceptance in the current literature on taxation. We call these views "rules" or "norms" of analysis. They represent patterns of thinking that have wide currency or that have become codified in the literature. The chapter describes eight of the most important rules or norms and then critically examines their validity in a framework that makes explicit allowance for collective choice. Our critique leads us to identify several shortcomings and limitations in existing patterns of thinking.

Suggested Citation

  • Walter Hettich & Stanley L. Winer, 2000. "Rules, Politics and the Normative Analysis of Taxation," Carleton Economic Papers 00-12, Carleton University, Department of Economics, revised 2002.
    • Handle: RePEc:car:carecp:00-12
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.carleton.ca/economics/wp-content/uploads/cep00-12.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hettich, W. & Winer, S.L., 1993. "The Political Economy of Taxation," Papers 8, Carleton - Business Administration.
    2. J. A. Mirrlees, 1971. "An Exploration in the Theory of Optimum Income Taxation," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 38(2), pages 175-208.
    3. Cornes,Richard & Sandler,Todd, 1996. "The Theory of Externalities, Public Goods, and Club Goods," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521477185, October.
    4. Brennan,Geoffrey & Buchanan,James M., 2006. "The Power to Tax," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521027922, October.
    5. Mueller,Dennis C. (ed.), 1997. "Perspectives on Public Choice," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521556545, October.
    6. Lockwood, Ben, 1993. "Commodity tax competition under destination and origin principles," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(2), pages 141-162, September.
    7. Hamilton, Jonathan H & Slutsky, Steven, 2000. " Decentralizing Allocation and Distribution by Separation with Information Transfers," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 2(3), pages 289-318.
    8. Mueller,Dennis C. (ed.), 1997. "Perspectives on Public Choice," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521553773, October.
    9. A. B. Atkinson & N. H. Stern, 1974. "Pigou, Taxation and Public Goods," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 41(1), pages 119-128.
    10. Myles,Gareth D., 1995. "Public Economics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521497695, October.
    11. Boylan, Richard T & McKelvey, Richard D, 1995. "Voting over Economic Plans," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(4), pages 860-871, September.
    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. Christopher Coyne, 2015. "Lobotomizing the defense brain," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 28(4), pages 371-396, December.
    2. Stanley L. Winer & Walter Hettich, 2002. "The Political Economy of Taxation: Positive and Normative Analysis when Collective Choice Matters," Carleton Economic Papers 02-11, Carleton University, Department of Economics, revised 2004.
    3. Giuseppe Bertola & John Driffill & Harold James & Hans-Werner Sinn & Jan-Egbert Sturm & Ákos Valentinyi, 2015. "Chapter 4: Migration in the European Union: Too much of a good thing?," EEAG Report on the European Economy, CESifo Group Munich, vol. 0, pages 78-96, February.
    4. Richard E. Wagner, 2012. "Deficits, Debt, and Democracy," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 14477.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    public economics; public finance; taxation; collective choice; rules;

    JEL classification:

    • D7 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making
    • H0 - Public Economics - - General
    • H1 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government
    • H2 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue

    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:car:carecp:00-12. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Sabrina Robineau). General contact details of provider: .

    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 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.

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.