IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fau/wpaper/wp081.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Centralization Trade-off with Non-Uniform Taxes

Author

Abstract

When local public goods are provided by a centralized authority, spillovers may be coordinated, but heterogeneity in preferences may be suppressed. Besley and Coate (2003) have already solved this classic trade-off for a uniform tax regime. Here, we extend their approach by allowing for a non-uniform tax regime. We find that centralization with our tax system necessarily increases welfare in comparison to uniform-tax centralization. Importantly, with non-cooperative legislators coming from homogenous districts, our centralization dominates decentralization for any degree of spillovers. In other cases, it at least improves odds of centralization, if measured by utilitarian yardstick.

Suggested Citation

  • Peter Tuchyòa & Martin Gregor, 2005. "Centralization Trade-off with Non-Uniform Taxes," Working Papers IES 81, Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Economic Studies, revised 2005.
    • Handle: RePEc:fau:wpaper:wp081
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://ies.fsv.cuni.cz/default/file/download/id/2472
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Timothy Besley & Stephen Coate, 1999. "Centralized versus Decentralized Provision of Local Public Goods: A Political Economy Analysis," NBER Working Papers 7084, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Dilip Mookherjee & Pranab K. Bardhan, 2000. "Capture and Governance at Local and National Levels," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(2), pages 135-139, May.
    3. Frey, Bruno S. & Eichenberger, Reiner, 1996. "FOCJ: Competitive governments for Europe," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(3), pages 315-327, September.
    4. Redoano, Michela & Scharf, Kimberly A., 2004. "The political economy of policy centralization: direct versus representative democracy," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(3-4), pages 799-817, March.
    5. Guillaume Cheikbossian, 2000. "Federalism, distributive politics and representative democracy," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 1(2), pages 105-122, July.
    6. Besley, Timothy & Coate, Stephen, 2003. "Centralized versus decentralized provision of local public goods: a political economy approach," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(12), pages 2611-2637, December.
    7. Massimo Bordignon & Luca Colombo & Umberto Galmarini, 2003. "Fiscal Federalism and Endogenous Lobbies' Formation," CESifo Working Paper Series 1017, CESifo.
    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. Karel Janda, 2005. "The Comparative Statics of the Effects of Credit Guarantees and Subsidies in the Competitive Lending Market," Working Papers IES 82, Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Economic Studies, revised 2005.
    2. Kateřina Tsolov, 2005. "ADR/GDR Potential in Central Europe," Working Papers IES 92, Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Economic Studies, revised 2005.
    3. Miloslav Vošvrda & Lukáš Vácha, 2007. "Heterogeneous Agents Model with the Worst Out Algorithm," Czech Economic Review, Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Economic Studies, vol. 1(1), pages 54-66, March.
    4. Adam Geršl, 2007. "Political Economy of Public Deficit: Perspectives for Constitutional Reform," Czech Economic Review, Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Economic Studies, vol. 1(1), pages 67-86, March.
    5. Jan Kodera & Miroslav Vošvrda, 2005. "Production, Capital Stock and Price Dynamics in a Simple Model of Closed Economy," Working Papers IES 93, Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Economic Studies, revised 2005.
    6. Tomáš Cahlík & Tomáš Honzák & Jana Honzáková & Marcel Jiřina & Natálie Reichlová, 2005. "Convergence of Consumption Structure," Working Papers IES 99, Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Economic Studies, revised 2005.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Martin Gregor & Peter Tuchyňa, 2007. "Centralization Trade-off with Non-Uniform Taxation," Czech Economic Review, Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Economic Studies, vol. 1(3), pages 223-253, November.
    2. Michela Redoano, 2010. "Does Centralization Affect the Number and Size of Lobbies?," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 12(3), pages 407-435, June.
    3. H.J. Roelfsema, 2004. "Legislative Bargaining and Lobbying in the European Union," Working Papers 04-16, Utrecht School of Economics.
    4. Ben Lockwood, 2008. "Voting, Lobbying, And The Decentralization Theorem," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(3), pages 416-431, November.
    5. Lars P. Feld & Horst Zimmermann & Thomas Döring, 2003. "Föderalismus, Dezentralität und Wirtschaftswachstum," Vierteljahrshefte zur Wirtschaftsforschung / Quarterly Journal of Economic Research, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research, vol. 72(3), pages 361-377.
    6. Hindriks, Jean & Lockwood, Ben, 2009. "Decentralization and electoral accountability: Incentives, separation and voter welfare," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 385-397, September.
    7. Grégoire Rota Graziosi, 2009. "On the Strategic Use of Representative Democracy in International Agreements," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 11(2), pages 281-296, April.
    8. Guillaume Cheikbossian & Nicolas Marceau, 2007. "Why Is Law Enforcement Decentralized?," Cahiers de recherche 0719, CIRPEE.
    9. Oliver Lorz & Gerald Willmann, 2013. "Size versus scope: on the trade-off facing economic unions," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 20(2), pages 247-267, April.
    10. Lorz, Oliver & Willmann, Gerald, 2005. "On the endogenous allocation of decision powers in federal structures," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(2), pages 242-257, March.
    11. Oliver Lorz & Gerald Willmann, 2008. "Enlargement versus Deepening: The Trade-off Facing Economic Unions," CESifo Working Paper Series 2455, CESifo.
    12. Stuti Khemani, 2010. "Decentralization by Politicians: Creation of Grants-financed Local Jurisdictions," Chapters, in: Núria Bosch & Marta Espasa & Albert Solé Ollé (ed.), The Political Economy of Inter-Regional Fiscal Flows, chapter 9, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    13. Lars P. Feld & Jan Schnellenbach & Christoph A Schaltegger, 2004. "On Government Centralization and Fiscal Referendums: A Theoretical Model and Evidence from Switzerland," Marburg Working Papers on Economics 200419, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung).
    14. Loeper, Antoine, 2017. "Cross-border externalities and cooperation among representative democracies," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 180-208.
    15. Guillaume Cheikbossian, 2016. "The political economy of (De)centralization with complementary public goods," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 47(2), pages 315-348, August.
    16. Marco Alderighi & Christophe Feder, 2014. "Political competition, power allocation and welfare in unitary and federal systems," Working Paper series 23_14, Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis.
    17. Cheikbossian, Guillaume, 2008. "Rent-seeking, spillovers and the benefits of decentralization," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(1), pages 217-228, January.
    18. Verdier, Thierry & Costa Lima, Rafael & Moreira, Humberto, 2012. "Centralized decision making against informed lobbying," CEPR Discussion Papers 9199, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    19. Libman, Alexander Mikhailovich, 2009. "Эндогенные Границы И Распределение Власти В Федерациях И Международных Сообществах [ENDOGENOUS BOUNDARIES AND DISTRIBUTION OF POWER In the Federation]," MPRA Paper 16473, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. repec:got:cegedp:25 is not listed on IDEAS
    21. Gijs Roelofs & Daniel Vuuren, 2017. "The Decentralization of Social Assistance and the Rise of Disability Insurance Enrolment," De Economist, Springer, vol. 165(1), pages 1-21, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Decentralization; Local Public Goods; Distributive Politics; Political Economy;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H40 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - General
    • H70 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - General
    • H72 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Budget and Expenditures
    • P51 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Comparative Economic Systems - - - Comparative Analysis of Economic Systems

    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:fau:wpaper:wp081. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic 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.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Natalie Svarcova (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/icunicz.html .

    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.