Costs of taxation and the size of government

Jørgen Andersen

Public Choice, 2012, vol. 153, issue 1, 83-115

Abstract: Existing theory on the form of government suggests that a parliamentary system promotes a larger size of government than does a presidential system. This paper extends the existing theory by allowing for distortionary taxation. A main result is that if taxation is sufficiently distortionary, the parliamentary system may promote a smaller size of government than the presidential system. The proposed mechanism appears consistent with several empirical patterns in the data that cannot be explained by other theories. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012

Keywords: Political economy; Constitution; Tax costs; Comparative politics; H3; H4; H5; P51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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DOI: 10.1007/s11127-011-9776-0

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