The Politics of 1992: Fiscal Policy and European Integration

Torsten Persson () and Guido Tabellini

No 501, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: The internal market in Europe will greatly increase the international mobility of resources. How will this affect fiscal policy in different countries? We first consider taxation of capital in a two-country model, where a democratically-chosen government in each country chooses tax policy. Higher capital mobility changes the politico-economic equilibrium in two ways. On one hand, it leads to more tax competition between the countries: this `economic effect' tends to lower tax rates in both countries. On the other hand, it alters voters' preferences and makes them elect a different government: this `political effect' offsets the increased tax competition, although not completely. We then consider taxation of labour, in a model where labour is internationally immobile. Eliminating the remaining barriers to trade in goods changes the distribution of labour earnings in the model, which again has a political as well as an economic effect. Again the economic and political effects push the tax rates in different directions, but here the political effect can prevail. The tendency for an adapting political equilibrium to preserve the status quo emerges as a general result of the paper.

Keywords: European Integration; Politics; Tax Competition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1991-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=501 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Journal Article: The Politics of 1992: Fiscal Policy and European Integration (1992)
Working Paper: The Politics of 1992: Fiscal Policy and European Integration (1990)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:501

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.cepr.org/ ... pers/dp.php?dpno=501

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().