IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/pubcho/v131y2007i1p127-140.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Inefficient households and the mix of government spending

Author

Listed:
  • Dan Anderberg

Abstract

A model is presented in which individuals can vote over government subsidies to a private good and over redistributive taxation. The subsidized good is purchased and shared by couples who act noncooperatively, while possibly being altruistic towards each other. The framework allows a separation of the subsidy policy from redistributive policy. In a majority voting equilibrium the subsidy is used exclusively to correct the individuals' spending pattern. The results suggest that spending on private goods should be an important item in government expenditures when there is strong positive income bias in the political process and/or when household decisions are relatively inefficient. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2007

Suggested Citation

  • Dan Anderberg, 2007. "Inefficient households and the mix of government spending," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 131(1), pages 127-140, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:131:y:2007:i:1:p:127-140
    DOI: 10.1007/s11127-006-9109-x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11127-006-9109-x
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11127-006-9109-x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    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. Tanzi,Vito & Schuknecht,Ludger, 2000. "Public Spending in the 20th Century," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521662918, September.
    2. Leora Friedberg, 1998. "Did Unilateral Divorce Raise Divorce Rates? Evidence from Panel Data," NBER Working Papers 6398, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Becker, Gary S, 1974. "A Theory of Social Interactions," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(6), pages 1063-1093, Nov.-Dec..
    4. Bergstrom, Ted & Blomquist, Soren, 1996. "The political economy of subsidized day care," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 443-457, November.
    5. Bearse, Peter & Glomm, Gerhard & Ravikumar, B., 2000. "On the political economy of means-tested education vouchers," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 44(4-6), pages 904-915, May.
    6. M. Browning & P. A. Chiappori, 1998. "Efficient Intra-Household Allocations: A General Characterization and Empirical Tests," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 66(6), pages 1241-1278, November.
    7. Chiappori, Pierre-Andre, 1988. "Rational Household Labor Supply," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 56(1), pages 63-90, January.
    8. Ligon, Ethan, 2002. "Dynamic Bargaining in Households (with application to Bangladesh)," CUDARE Working Papers 25102, University of California, Berkeley, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics.
    9. Paul A. Samuelson, 1956. "Social Indifference Curves," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 70(1), pages 1-22.
    10. Jonathan Gruber, 2000. "Is Making Divorce Easier Bad for Children? The Long Run Implications of Unilateral Divorce," NBER Working Papers 7968, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Epple, Dennis & Romano, Richard E., 1996. "Ends against the middle: Determining public service provision when there are private alternatives," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(3), pages 297-325, November.
    12. Pierre-Andre Chiappori & Bernard Fortin & Guy Lacroix, 2002. "Marriage Market, Divorce Legislation, and Household Labor Supply," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(1), pages 37-72, February.
    13. Manser, Marilyn & Brown, Murray, 1980. "Marriage and Household Decision-Making: A Bargaining Analysis," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 21(1), pages 31-44, February.
    14. Romer, Thomas, 1975. "Individual welfare, majority voting, and the properties of a linear income tax," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 4(2), pages 163-185, February.
    15. Epple, Dennis & Romano, Richard E, 1996. "Public Provision of Private Goods," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 104(1), pages 57-84, February.
    16. Grandmont, Jean-Michel, 1978. "Intermediate Preferences and the Majority Rule," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(2), pages 317-330, March.
    17. Roland Benabou, 2000. "Unequal Societies: Income Distribution and the Social Contract," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(1), pages 96-129, March.
    18. Roberts, Kevin W. S., 1977. "Voting over income tax schedules," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 329-340, December.
    19. Meltzer, Allan H & Richard, Scott F, 1981. "A Rational Theory of the Size of Government," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 89(5), pages 914-927, October.
    20. Greene, Kenneth V & Nikolaev, Oleg, 1999. "Voter Participation and the Redistributive State," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 98(1-2), pages 213-226, January.
    21. Shelly Lundberg & Robert Pollak, 2003. "Efficiency in Marriage," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 1(3), pages 153-167, September.
    22. repec:bla:scandj:v:97:y:1995:i:4:p:581-601 is not listed on IDEAS
    23. Peacock, Alan & Scott, Alex, 2000. "The Curious Attraction of Wagner's Law," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 102(1-2), pages 1-17, January.
    24. Ligon, Ethan, 2002. "Dynamic bargaining in households (with an application to Bangladesh)," CUDARE Working Paper Series 972, University of California at Berkeley, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Policy.
    25. Raquel Fernandez & Richard Rogerson, 1995. "On the Political Economy of Education Subsidies," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 62(2), pages 249-262.
    26. Stigler, George J, 1970. "Director's Law of Public Income Redistribution," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 13(1), pages 1-10, April.
    27. Bergstrom, Ted & Blomquist, Soren, 1996. "The political economy of subsidized day care," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 443-457, November.
    28. McElroy, Marjorie B & Horney, Mary Jean, 1981. "Nash-Bargained Household Decisions: Toward a Generalization of the Theory of Demand," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 22(2), pages 333-349, June.
    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. Volker Meier & Helmut Rainer, 2012. "Beyond Ramsey: Gender-Based Taxation with Non-Cooperative Couples," CESifo Working Paper Series 3966, CESifo.
    2. Anderberg, Dan & Rainer, Helmut, 2013. "Economic abuse: A theory of intrahousehold sabotage," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 282-295.
    3. Meier, Volker & Rainer, Helmut, 2015. "Pigou meets Ramsey: Gender-based taxation with non-cooperative couples," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 28-46.
    4. Meier, Volker & Rainer, Helmut, 2012. "On the optimality of joint taxation for noncooperative couples," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(4), pages 633-641.
    5. Richard Cornes & Jun-ichi Itaya & Aiko Tanaka, 2012. "Private provision of public goods between families," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 25(4), pages 1451-1480, October.
    6. Dan Anderberg & Helmut Rainer, 2011. "Domestic Abuse: Instrumental Violence and Economics Incentives," CESifo Working Paper Series 3673, CESifo.
    7. Takuya Obara & Yoshitomo Ogawa, 2020. "Optimal Taxation in an Endogenous Fertility Model with Non-Cooperative Couples," Discussion Paper Series 211, School of Economics, Kwansei Gakuin University, revised Jan 2021.

    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. Xu, Zeyu, 2007. "A survey on intra-household models and evidence," MPRA Paper 3763, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Olivier Bargain & Miriam Beblo & Denis Beninger & Richard Blundell & Raquel Carrasco & Maria-Concetta Chiuri & François Laisney & Valérie Lechene & Nicolas Moreau & Michal Myck & Javier Ruiz-Castillo , 2006. "Does the Representation of Household Behavior Matter for Welfare Analysis of Tax-benefit Policies? An Introduction," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 4(2), pages 99-111, June.
    3. Chiappori, Pierre-André & Donni, Olivier, 2009. "Non-unitary Models of Household Behavior: A Survey of the Literature," IZA Discussion Papers 4603, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Chiappori, Pierre-André & Donni, Olivier, 2006. "Les modèles non unitaires de comportement du ménage : un survol de la littérature," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 82(1), pages 9-52, mars-juin.
    5. J. Gimenez-Nadal & Jose Molina, 2013. "Parents’ education as a determinant of educational childcare time," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 26(2), pages 719-749, April.
    6. Rainald Borck, 2009. "Voting on redistribution with tax evasion," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 32(3), pages 439-454, March.
    7. Matthias Fahn & Ray Rees & Amelie Wuppermann, 2016. "Relational contracts for household formation, fertility choice and separation," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 29(2), pages 421-455, April.
    8. Robert A. Pollak, 2019. "How Bargaining in Marriage Drives Marriage Market Equilibrium," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 37(1), pages 297-321.
    9. Pierre-André Chiappori & Costas Meghir, 2014. "Intrahousehold Inequality," NBER Working Papers 20191, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Stephanie Lluis & Yazhuo (Annie) Pan, 2018. "Marital Property Laws and Women’s Labour Supply," Working Papers 1809, University of Waterloo, Department of Economics, revised 12 Nov 2018.
    11. Duha T. Altindag & John Nunley & Alan Seals, 2017. "Child-custody reform and the division of labor in the household," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 15(3), pages 833-856, September.
    12. Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay & Joan Esteban, 2007. "Redistributive Taxation and Public Expenditures," Economics Series Working Papers 366, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    13. Molina, José Alberto & Gimenez-Nadal, José Ignacio & Velilla, Jorge, 2018. "Intertemporal Labor Supply: A Household Collective Approach," IZA Discussion Papers 11276, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    14. Leora Friedberg & Steven Stern, 2014. "Marriage, Divorce, And Asymmetric Information," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 55(4), pages 1155-1199, November.
    15. Jara-Díaz, Sergio & Rosales-Salas, Jorge, 2017. "Beyond transport time: A review of time use modeling," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 209-230.
    16. Bergolo, Marcelo & Galván, Estefanía, 2018. "Intra-household Behavioral Responses to Cash Transfer Programs. Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity Design," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 100-118.
    17. Rainald Borck, 2007. "Voting, Inequality And Redistribution," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(1), pages 90-109, February.
    18. Olivier Bargain & Olivier Donni, 2014. "Optimal Commodity Taxation and Redistribution within Households," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 81(321), pages 48-62, January.
    19. Laura Mayoral & Joan Esteban, 2019. "A politico-economic model of public expenditure and income taxation," SERIEs: Journal of the Spanish Economic Association, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 10(3), pages 479-507, November.
    20. Claude d’Aspremont & Rodolphe Dos Santos Ferreira, 2019. "Enlarging the collective model of household behavior: A revealed preference analysis," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 68(1), pages 1-19, July.

    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:kap:pubcho:v:131:y:2007:i:1:p:127-140. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.