Democratic choice and taxation

by Walter Hettich

This book examines tax policies and tax systems as they arise from democratic choices, set against the background of a market economy. The authors find that democratic institutions yield complex tax systems with features that follow a varied but predictable pattern. In developing their analysis, they use formal modeling of voting behavior, emphasizing recent advances in the theory of probabilistic voting. The analysis in this book differs from the available tax literature by relating fiscal choices directly to voting and political competition and by examining tax systems in democratic countries from a variety of perspectives.