Bevolent Planners, Malevolent Dictators and Democratic Voters

Jonas Agell and Mats Persson

No 2006:6, Research Papers in Economics from Stockholm University, Department of Economics

Abstract: We study the size of government and of GDP, under autocratic and democratic rule, respectively. It turns out that first, both democratic and authoritarian rulers apply the Samuelson (1954) criterion when deciding on productive public goods. Second, the labor supply elasticity and the skewness of the ability distribution determine whether democracy or autocracy will lead to the highest output. Third, when the ability distribution is sufficiently skewed, the democratic majority will behave like a rational autocrat, who chooses the tax rate that maximizes tax revenue. Fourth, population ageing in Western societies may lead to the policy preferred by a rational autocrat.

Keywords: Leviathan; democracy; median voter; redistribution; public goods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D70 H20 H40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2006-06-16
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-pbe and nep-pol
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:sunrpe:2006_0006

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