TY  - JOUR
AU  - Persson,Torsten
AU  - Tabellini,Guido
TI  - The Politics of 1992: Fiscal Policy and European Integration
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 3460
PY  - 1990
Y2  - October 1990
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w3460
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w3460.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Torsten Persson
Torsten and Ragnar Soderberg Chair in Economic Sci
Institute for International Economic Studies
Stockholm University
SE-106 91 Stockholm
SWEDEN
Tel: +46 8 163066
Fax: +46 8 6747801
E-Mail: Torsten.Persson@iies.su.se

Guido Tabellini
IGIER Universita' Bocconi
Via Roentgen 1
20136 Milano
Italy
Tel: 39 2 583 6 3305; fax 3302
E-Mail: guido.tabellini@unibocconi.it
AB  - The internal market in Europe will greatly increase the international mobility of resources. How will this affect fiscal policy in different countries? The first part of the paper considers taxation of capital in a two country model, where a democratically chosen government in each country chooses tax policy. Higher capital mobility changes the politico-economic equilibrium in two ways. On the one hand, it leads to more tax competition between the countries: this "economic effect" tends to lower both countries' tax rates. On the other hand, it alters voters' preferences and make them elect a different government: this "political effect" offsets the increased tax competition, although not completely so. The second part of the paper considers taxation of labor, in a model where labor is internationally immobile. Eliminating the remaining barriers' to trade in goals, changes the distribution of labor earnings in the economy, which again has a political, as well as an economic effect. And again the economic and political effects push the tax rates in different directions, but here the political effect can prevail. The tendency for an adapting political equilibrium to preserve the status quo, thus emerges as a general result of the paper.
ER  -