Political Competition, Tax Salience and Accountability: Theory and Some Evidence from Italy

Emanuele Bracco, Francesco Porcelli and Michela Redoano ()

No 4167, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: This paper argues that high political competition does not necessarily induce policy makers to perform better as previous research has shown. We develop a political economy model and we show that when political competition is tight, and elected politicians can rely on more tax instruments, they will substitute salient taxes with less salient ones, which are not necessarily preferable. These predictions are largely confirmed using a dataset on Italian municipal elections and taxes.

Keywords: political competition; government; accountability; tax salience (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D70 H11 H20 H77 H87 N12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

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Working Paper: Political Competition, Tax Salience and Accountability: Theory and Some Evidence from Italy (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_4167

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