Political Economics and Public Finance

Torsten Persson () and Guido Tabellini

No 2235, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: Observed fiscal policy varies greatly across time and countries. How can we explain this variation? This paper surveys the recent literature that has tried to answer this question. We adopt a unified approach in portraying public policy as the equilibrium outcome of an explicitly specified political process. We divide the material into three parts. In Part I, we focus on median-voter equilibria that apply to policy issues where disagreement between voters is likely to be one-dimensional. We thus study the general redistributive programs, which are typical of the modern welfare state: redistribution between rich and poor, young and old, employed and unemployed, resident of different regions, and labour and capital. In Part II we study special interest politics. Here the policy problem is multidimensional and we focus on specific political mechanisms: we study legislative bargaining, lobbying, and electoral competition, as well as the possible interactions between these different forms of political activity. Finally, Part III deals with a set of questions that can be brought under the label of comparative politics, as we deal with policy choice under alternative political constitutions: we model some stylized features of congressional and parliamentary political systems, focusing on their implications for rent extraction by politicians, redistribution and public goods provision.

Keywords: Lobbying; Politics; Public Economics; Redistribution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E62 H50 H60 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1999-09
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (59)

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Related works:
Chapter: Political economics and public finance (2002)
Working Paper: Political Economics and Public Finance (1999)
Working Paper: Political Economics and Public Finance
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