IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/pubeco/v94y2010i7-8p453-466.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Optimal democratic mechanisms for taxation and public good provision

Author

Listed:
  • Bierbrauer, Felix
  • Sahm, Marco

Abstract

We study the interdependence of optimal tax and expenditure policies. An optimal policy requires that information on preferences is made available. We first study this problem from a general mechanism design perspective and show that efficiency is possible only if the individuals who decide on public good provision face an own incentive scheme that differs from the tax system. We then study democratic mechanisms with the property that tax payers vote over public goods. Under such a mechanism, efficiency cannot be reached and welfare from public good provision declines as the inequality between rich and poor individuals increases.

Suggested Citation

  • Bierbrauer, Felix & Sahm, Marco, 2010. "Optimal democratic mechanisms for taxation and public good provision," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(7-8), pages 453-466, August.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:pubeco:v:94:y:2010:i:7-8:p:453-466
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047-2727(10)00026-5
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Neeman, Zvika, 2004. "The relevance of private information in mechanism design," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 117(1), pages 55-77, July.
    2. Judd, Kenneth L., 1985. "The law of large numbers with a continuum of IID random variables," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 19-25, February.
    3. Narayana R. Kocherlakota, 2005. "Zero Expected Wealth Taxes: A Mirrlees Approach to Dynamic Optimal Taxation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 73(5), pages 1587-1621, September.
    4. Marco Bassetto & Christopher Phelan, 2008. "Tax Riots," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 75(3), pages 649-669.
    5. Timothy Feddersen & Wolfgang Pesendorfer, 1997. "Voting Behavior and Information Aggregation in Elections with Private Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 65(5), pages 1029-1058, September.
    6. Ledyard, John O., 1978. "Incentive compatibility and incomplete information," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 171-189, June.
    7. Dirk Bergemann & Stephen Morris, 2012. "Robust Mechanism Design," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Robust Mechanism Design The Role of Private Information and Higher Order Beliefs, chapter 2, pages 49-96, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    8. Hellwig, Martin F., 2007. "A contribution to the theory of optimal utilitarian income taxation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(7-8), pages 1449-1477, August.
    9. Daron Acemoglu & Michael Golosov & Aleh Tsyvinski, 2008. "Political Economy of Mechanisms," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 76(3), pages 619-641, May.
    10. Edward Clarke, 1971. "Multipart pricing of public goods," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 11(1), pages 17-33, September.
    11. Boadway, Robin & Keen, Michael, 1993. "Public Goods, Self-Selection and Optimal Income Taxation," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 34(3), pages 463-478, August.
    12. Howard R. Bowen, 1943. "The Interpretation of Voting in the Allocation of Economic Resources," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 58(1), pages 27-48.
    13. Baron, David P & Myerson, Roger B, 1982. "Regulating a Monopolist with Unknown Costs," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(4), pages 911-930, July.
    14. Austen-Smith, David & Banks, Jeffrey S., 1996. "Information Aggregation, Rationality, and the Condorcet Jury Theorem," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 90(1), pages 34-45, March.
    15. Mikhail Golosov & Narayana Kocherlakota & Aleh Tsyvinski, 2003. "Optimal Indirect and Capital Taxation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 70(3), pages 569-587.
    16. Al-Najjar, Nabil I., 2004. "Aggregation and the law of large numbers in large economies," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 1-35, April.
    17. Peter Norman, 2004. "Efficient Mechanisms for Public Goods with Use Exclusions," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 71(4), pages 1163-1188.
    18. Weymark, John A., 1986. "A reduced-form optimal nonlinear income tax problem," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 199-217, July.
    19. Ledyard, John O. & Palfrey, Thomas R., 2002. "The approximation of efficient public good mechanisms by simple voting schemes," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(2), pages 153-171, February.
    20. Piketty, Thomas, 1999. "The information-aggregation approach to political institutions," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 43(4-6), pages 791-800, April.
    21. Felix Bierbrauer & Marco Sahm, 2008. "Optimal Democratic Mechanisms for Taxation and Public Good Provision," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2008_09, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    22. Martin F. Hellwig, 2003. "Public-Good Provision with Many Participants," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 70(3), pages 589-614.
    23. Anthony Downs, 1957. "An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65(2), pages 135-135.
    24. Weymark, John A, 1987. "Comparative Static Properties of Optimal Nonlinear Income Taxes," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(5), pages 1165-1185, September.
    25. A. B. Atkinson & N. H. Stern, 1974. "Pigou, Taxation and Public Goods," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 41(1), pages 119-128.
    26. J. A. Mirrlees, 1971. "An Exploration in the Theory of Optimum Income Taxation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 38(2), pages 175-208.
    27. Groves, Theodore, 1973. "Incentives in Teams," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 41(4), pages 617-631, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gersbach, Hans & Tejada, Oriol, 2020. "Semi-flexible Majority Rules for Public Good Provision," CEPR Discussion Papers 15099, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. Giebe, Thomas & Schweinzer, Paul, 2014. "Consuming your way to efficiency: Public goods provision through non-distortionary tax lotteries," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 1-12.
    3. Khan, M. Ali & Qiao, Lei & Rath, Kali P. & Sun, Yeneng, 2020. "Modeling large societies: Why countable additivity is necessary," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 189(C).
    4. Musharraf Rasool Cyan & Jorge Martinez-Vazquez & Violeta Vulovic, 2014. "New approaches to measuring tax effort," Chapters, in: Richard M. Bird & Jorge Martinez-Vazquez (ed.), Taxation and Development: The Weakest Link?, chapter 2, pages 27-68, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    5. Martin Kolmar & Dana Sisak, 2014. "(In)efficient public-goods provision through contests," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 43(1), pages 239-259, June.
    6. Felix J. Bierbrauer, 2014. "Optimal Tax and Expenditure Policy with Aggregate Uncertainty," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 6(1), pages 205-257, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Felix Bierbrauer & Marco Sahm, 2008. "Optimal Democratic Mechanisms for Taxation and Public Good Provision," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2008_09, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    2. Felix Bierbrauer, 2009. "Optimal Income Taxation and Public Goods Provision in a Large Economy with Aggregate Uncertainty," CESifo Working Paper Series 2701, CESifo.
    3. Felix Bierbrauer, 2008. "A unified approach to the revelation of public goods preferences and to optimal income taxation," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2008_39, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    4. Felix Bierbrauer & Marco Sahm, 2006. "Informative Voting and the Samuelson Rule," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2006_18, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    5. Bierbrauer, Felix & Sahm, Marco, 2006. "Informative Voting and the Samuelson Rule," Discussion Paper Series of SFB/TR 15 Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems 159, Free University of Berlin, Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Bonn, University of Mannheim, University of Munich.
    6. Martin Hellwig & Felix Bierbrauer, 2009. "Public Good Provision in a Large Economy," 2009 Meeting Papers 1062, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    7. Felix J. Bierbrauer, 2014. "Optimal Tax and Expenditure Policy with Aggregate Uncertainty," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 6(1), pages 205-257, February.
    8. Felix Bierbrauer, 2008. "Optimal Income Taxation, Public Goods Provision and Robust Mechanism Design," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2008_31, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    9. Felix Bierbrauer, 2009. "Optimal Income Taxation and Public Good Provision with Endogenous Interest Groups," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 11(2), pages 311-342, April.
    10. Martin Hellwig, 2015. "Financial Stability and Monetary Policy," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2015_10, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    11. Felix Bierbrauer, 2006. "Distortionary Taxation and the Free-Rider Problem," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2006_6, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    12. Martin Hellwig, 2004. "Optimal Income Taxation, Public-Goods Provision and Public-Sector Pricing: A Contribution to the Foundations of Public Economics," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2004_14, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    13. Felix Bierbrauer, 2006. "Collectively Incentive Compatible Tax Systems," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2006_24, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    14. Felix Bierbrauer, 2012. "Distortionary taxation and the free-rider problem," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 19(5), pages 732-752, October.
    15. Felix J. Bierbrauer & Martin F. Hellwig, 2015. "Public-Good Provision in Large Economies," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2015_12, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    16. Bierbrauer, Felix J. & Boyer, Pierre C., 2013. "Political competition and Mirrleesian income taxation: A first pass," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 1-14.
    17. Bierbrauer, Felix & Netzer, Nick, 2016. "Mechanism design and intentions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 557-603.
    18. Bierbrauer, Felix, 2006. "Optimal Income Taxation and Public Good Provision in a Two-Class Economy," Discussion Paper Series of SFB/TR 15 Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems 97, Free University of Berlin, Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Bonn, University of Mannheim, University of Munich.
    19. Felix Bierbrauer, 2005. "Optimal Income Taxation and Public Good Provision in a Two-Class Economy," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2005_25, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    20. Felix Bierbrauer & Martin Hellwig, 2011. "Mechanism Design and Voting for Public-Good Provision," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2011_31, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:pubeco:v:94:y:2010:i:7-8:p:453-466. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505578 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.