This paper develops an infinite horizon model of public spending and taxation in which policy decisions are determined by legislative bargaining. The policy space incorporates both productive and distributive public spending and distortionary taxation. The productive spending is investing in a public good that benefits all citizens (e.g., national defense or air quality) and the distributive spending is district-specific transfers (e.g., pork barrel spending). Investment in the public good creates a dynamic linkage across policy-making periods. The analysis explores the dynamics of legislative policy choices, focusing on the efficiency of the steady state level of taxation and allocation of tax revenues. The model sheds new light on the efficiency of legislative policy-making and has a number of novel positive implications.

How does the size of the transfer system evolve in the short and in the long run? We model income redistribution as determined by voting among individuals of different types and income realizations. Taxation is distortionary because it discourages effort to accumulate human capital. Voters are fully rational, realizing that transfers have implications also for future economic decisions and taxation outcomes. In our economy, our politically driven redistribution provides insurance, and we investigate to what extent the democratic process provides it appropriately. Ageneralfinding is that redistribution tends to be too persistent relative to what would have been chosen by a utilitarian planner under commitment. The difference is larger, the lower is the political influence of young agents, the lower is the altruistic concern for future generations, and the lower is risk-aversion. Furthermore, there tends to be too much redistribution in the political equilibrium. Finally, we find that the political mechanism is important: settings with smooth preference aggregation–we analyze probabilistic voting here–produce less persistence and do not admit multiple rational expectation equilibria, which occur under majority-voting aggregation.

In this paper we study how a benevolent government that cannot commit to future policy should trade off the costs and benefits of public expenditure. We characterize and solve for Markov-perfect equilibria of the dynamic game between successive governments. The characterization consists of an intertemporal first-order condition (a “generalized Euler equation”) for the government and we use it both to gain insight into the nature of the equilibrium and as a basis for computations. For a calibrated economy, we find that when the only tax base available to the government is capital income—an inelastic source of funds at any point in time—the government still refrains from taxing at confiscatory rates. We also find that when the only tax base is labor income the Markov equilibrium features less public expenditure and lower tax rates than the Ramsey equilibrium.

Do mandatory spending programs such as Medicare improve efficiency? We analyze a model with two parties allocating a fixed budget to a public good and private transfers each period over an infinite horizon. We compare two institutions that differ in whether public good spending is discretionary or mandatory. We model mandatory spending as an endogenous status quo since it is enacted by law and remains in effect until changed. Mandatory programs result in higher public good spending; furthermore, they ex ante Pareto dominate discretionary programs when parties are patient, persistence of power is low, and polarization is low.

This paper considers whether the ratio of transfer payments to expenditure on public goods in democracies can be explained as the outcome of majority voting. A simple model is constructed in which individuals vote for government expenditure on a public good, for a given income tax rate. The transfer payment is then determined by the government’s budget constraint. The equilibrium ratio of trans-fers to public good expenditure per person is expressed as a quadratic function both of the ratio of the median to the mean wage, and of the tax rate. Data for 29 democratic countries are used to estimate a cross-sectional regression. The empirical results confirm that reduc-tions in the skewness of the wage rate distribution are associated with reductions in transfer payments relative to public goods expenditure, at a decreasing rate. Furthermore, increases in the tax rate, from relatively low levels, are associated with increases in the relative im-portance of transfer payments. But beyond a certain level, further tax rate increases are associated with a lower ratio of transfers to public goods. ∗We are grateful to Shuyun May Li for comments on an earlier version of this paper. 1 1

We revisit the classic problem of tax competition in the context of federal nations, and derive a positive theory of partial decentralization. A capital poor median voter chooses to use redistributive capital taxes to provide public goods. The expectation of high capital taxes, however, results in a small capital stock which lowers returns to redistribution. The median voter therefore wants to commit to a lower level of capital taxes. She does so by setting a partial degree of decentralization in the Constitution. The equilibrium degree of decentralization balances the positive effect of tax competition on capital taxes with the loss in redistribution that results. The degree of decentralization is non-monotonic in inequality, increasing in the redistributive efficiency of public good provision, and decreasing in

This paper characterizes a stationary Markov-perfect political equilibrium where agents vote over income taxation that distorts educational investment. Agents be-come rich or poor through educational investment, and the poor have a second chance at success. The results show the following concerning the cost of a second chance. First, when the cost is low, the economy is characterized by high levels of upward mobility and inequality, and a low tax burden supported by the poor with prospects for upward mobility. Second, when the cost is high, there are multiple equilibria with various patterns of upward mobility, inequality and redistribution. Numerical examples show that the shift from a high-cost economy to a low-cost

Abstract This paper analyzes the dynamics of trade policy reform under democracy. In an overlapping generations model, heterogeneous agents may acquire skills when young thereby determining the skill composition of their cohort. Current and anticipated trade policies influence education decisions and thus voters' trade policy preferences. We show that there may exist two political steady states: one protectionist and one liberal. Transition from the former to the latter can be achieved by government announcements, temporary educational subsidies, or tariff liberalization by trading partners, but generally not by transfer payments to adversely affected workers. We find additionally that reform is politically feasible only if the proposed liberalization is sufficiently large, suggesting that radical reform may be necessary for escaping a protectionist political rut.

Abstract This study presents a two-period overlapping-generations model featuring intergenerational con ‡ict over …scal policy. In particular, we characterize a Markovperfect political equilibrium of the voting game between generations and show the following three main results. First, population aging incentivizes the government to invest more in capital for future public spending, positively a¤ecting economic growth. Second, when the government …nances its spending by issuing bonds, the introduction of the balanced budget rule results in a higher public spending-to-GDP ratio and a higher growth rate. Third, to obtain a normative implication of the political equilibrium, we compare it with an allocation chosen by a benevolent planner who takes care of all future generations. The planner's allocation might feature less growth and more borrowing than the political equilibrium if the planner attaches low weights to future generations.

This paper develops a model where income inequality and intergenerational mo-bility are jointly determined via redistributive politics. The model includes two key factors: accessibility of tertiary education for poor-born agents and multiple self-ful lling expectations of agents. Given these factors, the model provides predictions of cross-country di¤erences in inequality and mobility consistent with empirical ob-servations.