Democratic Choice and Taxation

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"This book provides an excellent review and critical analysis of existing economic literature on tax systems and the political environment. Its many research suggestions are particularly appealing to researchers in public policy or public finance. ...this book serves as an important reminder of the broader issues that must be considered in framing our work." Journal of the American Taxation Association "Walter Hettich and Stanley Winer have written the seminal articles applying public choice to questions of taxation. This fine book consolidates and extends their thinking on this topic. It is the definitive public choice analysis of taxation. A must read for anyone in public choice or public finance." Dennis Mueller, University of Vienna "Economists who engage in the policy process quickly learn that politics seems to count more than economics in determining outcomes. Over the last decade, Walter Hettich and Stanley Winer have done much to improve our understanding of how to take political as well as economic factors systematically into account in the analysis of tax policy. In this book, they bring together and extend their previous work in what can only be called a tour de force - a multipronged theoretical, empirical, and institutional analysis of the complex fiscal game through which democratic states determine their tax structures. The book not only provides intriguing insights for anyone interested in taxation; it also, and more importantly, lays out what appears to be a promising research agenda for analysts of public policy in general." Richard Bird, University of Toronto "Hettich and Winer's Democratic Choice and Taxation represents a major and most welcome departure from the optimal tax literature which has dominated the genre for most of this century. Their work treats the choice of tax instrument, its base, and its differential rates across taxpayers as a political economy problem, where deadweights are weighted by political valences of groups with differential power, and weighed against administrative and feasibility costs. Along the way, attention is paid to the cooperative fiscal instruments of tariffs and deficits, while simulations and empirics are introduced to test hypotheses." Thomas Borcherding, Claremont Graduate University, California

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