IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/4041.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Incumbent Behavior: Vote Seeking, Tax Setting and Yardstick Competition

Author

Listed:
  • Timothy Besley
  • Anne Case

Abstract

This paper presents a theoretical and empirical investigation of tax competition when voters use the tax policy of neighboring jurisdictions as information to evaluate the performance of their incumbent politicians. We show that this has implications both for voter tolerance of high taxes and for the process of tax setting itself, Our empirical results, which use two different tax data sets, confirm the importance of neighbors' taxes both on the probability of incumbent reelection and on tax setting behavior.

Suggested Citation

  • Timothy Besley & Anne Case, 1992. "Incumbent Behavior: Vote Seeking, Tax Setting and Yardstick Competition," NBER Working Papers 4041, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:4041
    Note: PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w4041.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Epple, Dennis & Zelenitz, Allan, 1981. "The Implications of Competition among Jurisdictions: Does Tiebout Need Politics?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 89(6), pages 1197-1217, December.
    2. Rubinfeld, Daniel L., 1987. "The economics of the local public sector," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 11, pages 571-645, Elsevier.
    3. Rogoff, Kenneth, 1990. "Equilibrium Political Budget Cycles," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(1), pages 21-36, March.
    4. Paul R. Milgrom, 1981. "Good News and Bad News: Representation Theorems and Applications," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 12(2), pages 380-391, Autumn.
    5. Case, Anne C, 1991. "Spatial Patterns in Household Demand," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 59(4), pages 953-965, July.
    6. Heckman, James J, 1978. "Dummy Endogenous Variables in a Simultaneous Equation System," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(4), pages 931-959, July.
    7. Sundadam, R.K. & Banks, J., 1991. "Adverse Selection and Moral hazard in a Repeated Elections Models," RCER Working Papers 283, University of Rochester - Center for Economic Research (RCER).
    8. Henderson, J Vernon, 1985. "The Tiebout Model: Bring Back the Entrepreneurs," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 93(2), pages 248-264, April.
    9. Epple, Dennis & Romer, Thomas & Filimon, Radu, 1988. "Community development with endogenous land use controls," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 133-162, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Ferreira, Fernando, 2010. "You can take it with you: Proposition 13 tax benefits, residential mobility, and willingness to pay for housing amenities," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(9-10), pages 661-673, October.
    2. Carlos A. Ponzio, 1998. "Competencia entre jurisdicciones y la ineficiencia de los gobiernos locales," Estudios Económicos, El Colegio de México, Centro de Estudios Económicos, vol. 13(2), pages 171-195.
    3. Graham Crampton, 1996. "Local Government Structure and Urban Residential Location," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 33(7), pages 1061-1076, August.
    4. Tidiane Ly, 2018. "Sub-metropolitan tax competition with household and capital mobility," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 25(5), pages 1129-1169, October.
    5. Wildasin, David E. & Wilson, John Douglas, 1996. "Imperfect mobility and local government behaviour in an overlapping-generations model," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(2), pages 177-198, May.
    6. David Stadelmann & Steve Billon, 2012. "Capitalisation of Fiscal Variables and Land Scarcity," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 49(7), pages 1571-1594, May.
    7. Boarnet, Marlon G. & Glazer, Amihai, 2002. "Federal grants and yardstick competition," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(1), pages 53-64, July.
    8. Raphaël Soubeyran, 2006. "Valence Advantages and Public Goods Consumption: Does a Disadvantaged Candidate Choose an Extremist Position?," Working Papers 2006.84, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    9. Renato Camodeca & Alex Almici & Umberto Sagliaschi, 2018. "Sustainability Disclosure in Integrated Reporting: Does It Matter to Investors? A Cheap Talk Approach," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(12), pages 1-34, November.
    10. Steven C. Deller & David L. Chicoine, 1993. "Representative Versus Direct Democracy: a Test of Allocative Efficiency in Local Government Expenditures," Public Finance Review, , vol. 21(1), pages 100-114, January.
    11. Fernandez, R. & Rogerson, R., 1992. "Income Distribution, Communities and the Quality of Public Education: A Policy Analysis," Papers 1, Boston University - Department of Economics.
    12. Fernando Ferreira & Joseph Gyourko, 2009. "Do Political Parties Matter? Evidence from U.S. Cities," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 124(1), pages 399-422.
    13. Stephen Mehay & Kenneth Seiden, 1986. "Municipal residency laws and local public budgets," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 48(1), pages 27-35, January.
    14. Raphaël Soubeyran, 2009. "Does a Disadvantaged Candidate Choose an Extremist Position?," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 93-94, pages 301-326.
    15. Erik B. Johnson & Randall Walsh, 2009. "The Effect of Property Taxes on Location Decisions:Evidence From the Market for Vacation Homes," NBER Working Papers 14793, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Sergey Sinelnikov & Pavel Kadochnikov & Ilya Trunin, 2008. "From Elections to Appointments of the Regional Governors: Major Challenges and Outcomes," Published Papers 2, Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy, revised 2008.
    17. Adriaan R. Soetevent, 2006. "Empirics of the Identification of Social Interactions; An Evaluation of the Approaches and Their Results," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(2), pages 193-228, April.
    18. Caroline M. Hoxby, 1995. "Is There an Equity-Efficiency Trade-Off in School Finance? Tiebout and a Theory of the Local Public Goods Producer," NBER Working Papers 5265, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Vernon Henderson, J., 1995. "Will homeowners impose property taxes?," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 153-181, April.
    20. Aidt, Toke S. & Magris, Francesco, 2006. "Capital taxation and electoral accountability," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 277-291, June.

    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:nbr:nberwo:4041. 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: . General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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: (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.