This paper investigates the importance of political ideology for the choice of the tax structure. In particular, we examine the effects of cabinet ideology on the distribution of the tax burden across factors of production and consumption for 16 OECD countries over the period 1970–2000 by...

This paper explores the relationship between public sector efficiency (PSE) and the level of democracy, both theoretically and empirically. At the theoretical level a simple model of elections with two time periods is presented, which takes into account whether the political regime is democratic...

Direct measurement of the social cost of rent seeking is impeded by non-observable and non-reported activities. We use a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model to compute the social cost of rent seeking in Europe. Our estimate is based on competition among interest groups for privileges...