This thesis focuses on understanding the impact of different factors on affecting the tax rate in a democracy. The first model traces the influence of ideology on determining the tax rate in the presence of political competition. The main outcome is that when the salience of the ideology increases, the cohort of voters with the median ideological view become the swing voters and the equilibrium tax rate is then designed to benefit that cohort of voters. The second model focuses on the impact of inner group altruism on taxation. It establishes that, in a democracy, a minority elite, where altruism is present among its members, will be more influential and the equilibrium policy may reflect more the preferences of those elite. There are two main analytical results. First, the social group that exhibits higher inner altruism prefers a lower tax rate. Then the higher the inner altruism the rich exhibit, the lower is the tax rate they enjoy. Second, if both social groups increase their inner altruism by the same amount, then the equilibrium tax rate reduces. The third model makes precise the relationship between inequality of income and a social security tax rate. The model proposes a stationary overlapping- generations economy, in which all individuals currently alive vote every period on social security. There is ideology diversity. The main analytical result is that, in equilibrium, the generation that is less ideological benefits from lower inequality of income. We find that the less ideological generation enjoys a larger allocation of consumption and pushes the size of social security to be in its own favour.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:573740 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Luna, David Juarez |
| Publisher | University of Essex |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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