Suchergebnisse

In fiscal interaction, a policy is evolutionarily stable if, once adopted by all governments, jurisdictions that deviate from it fare worse than those that stick to it. Evolutionary stability is the appropriate solution concept for models of imitative learning (policy mimicking). We show that evolutionarily stable strategies implement identical allocations, regardless of whether jurisdictions use tax rates or expenditure levels as their strategy variable. This is in contrast to the observation that the allocations in the Nash equilibria of games played in tax rates or expenditure levels differ from one another. With evolutionary play, jurisdictions set taxes and expenditures competitively, i.e., they behave as if they were all negligibly small.

In fiscal interaction, a policy is evolutionarily stable if, once adopted by all governments, jurisdictions that deviate from it fare worse than those that stick to it. Evolutionary stability is the appropriate solution concept for models of imitative learning (policy mimicking). We show that evolutionarily stable strategies implement identical allocations, regardless of whether jurisdictions use tax rates or expenditure levels as their strategy variable. This is in contrast to the observation that the allocations in the Nash equilibria of games played in tax rates or expenditure levels differ from one another. With evolutionary play, jurisdictions set taxes and expenditures competitively, i.e., they behave as if they were all negligibly small.

Ökonomen sind im öffentlichen Diskurs und in der Politikberatung nur mäßig präsent. Für den geringen Einfluss der Ökonomik werden kommunikative (Mathematisierung, Realitätsferne) und dogmatische Gründe (Knappheitsdiskurs, Pareto-Effizienz, Menschenbild) ausgemacht. Aus dem Befund, dass ökonomisches Denken und Menschenbild markant von der alltäglichen Lebenserfahrung abweichen, führt zum Ausblenden ökonomischer Sachverhalte aus der Politik - mit nicht gewünschten Folgen. Andererseits gibt es keine systematische empirische Evidenz, dass Regierungen, die gegenüber ökonomischem Expertenrat folgsamer sind als andere, auch tatsächlich eine bessere ökonomische Leistungsbilanz haben. (ICE2)

Rather than about absolute payoffs, governments in fiscal competition often seem to care about their performance relative to other governments. Moreover, they often appear to mimic policies observed elsewhere. We study such behaviour in a tax competition game with mobile capital à la Zodrow-Mieszkowski. Both with relative payoff concerns and for imitative policies, evolutionary stability is the appropriate solution concept. It renders tax competition more aggressive than with best-reply policies (Nash equilibrium). Whatever the number of jurisdictions involved, an evolutionary stable tax policy coincides with the competitive outcome of a tax competition game played among infinitely many governments. Tax competition among boundedly rational governments, thus, involves drastic efficiency losses.