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ABSTRACTMultinational corporations can play off host governments to minimise their tax payments in the absence of internationally coordinated fiscal policies. Without a supranational enforcement agency, most tax harmonization policies are unstable because one or another signatory always has an incentive to break ranks. This produces a sub‐optimal tax harvest for a group of host governments taken as a whole. This is a collective action problem for host governments which can be stated in the form of a Prisoner's Dilemma supergame. Equilibrium cooperative solutions have been suggested for this game which do not need higher authorities to enforce them. The application of these solutions to the host governments' tax problem is discussed, with the conclusion that under certain conditions self‐policing tax harmonization agreements are possible.

It is increasingly argued that bargaining between citizens and governments over tax collection can provide a foundation for the development of responsive and accountable governance in developing countries. However, while intuitively attractive, surprisingly little research has captured the reality and complexity of this relationship in practice. This book provides the most complete treatment of the connections between taxation and accountability in developing countries, providing both new evidence and an invaluable starting point for future research. Drawing on cross-country econometric evidence and detailed case studies from Ghana, Kenya and Ethiopia, Wilson Prichard shows that reliance on taxation has, in fact, increased responsiveness and accountability by expanding the political power wielded by taxpayers. Critically, however, processes of tax bargaining have been highly varied, frequently long term and contextually contingent. Capturing this diversity provides novel insight into politics in developing countries and how tax reform can be designed to encourage broader governance gains

Many Sub-Saharan African countries are unable to generate sufficient tax revenues for public purposes. While it is widely accepted that governments' ability to tax is shaped by politics, the precise mechanisms through which this relationship takes place in practice remain elusive. Based on a historical analysis of four major tax reforms in Ghana from the 1850s to the late 1990s, this article captures the various ways in which taxpayers negotiate with the state in an attempt to limit the extent of taxation, especially in cases where state reciprocity falls short of what people expect. Our evidence suggests that, far from being a recent development, effective taxation in Ghana has long depended on the ability of the state to convince taxpayers that tax revenues will be used for the public benefit. A history of misappropriation of tax revenues, overt corruption, and profligacy diminished taxpayers' support for governments' tax efforts. More generally, the article points to the importance of understanding how tax bargaining works in practice and people's perceptions of their governments over the long term to overcome resistance to tax reforms.

Studies of political budget cycles in developing countries have generally sought to inform understanding of short-term fiscal dynamics, but can also offer unique insight into broader political dynamics in developing countries. This article correspondingly employs markedly improved data in order to study the impact of elections on tax collection, and draw broader lessons. It shows that while electionsas a grouphave had no significant effect on tax collection, the subset ofcompetitive electionshas had a significant negative impact on pre-election tax collection; while this effect appears to be largest where incumbents are particularly unpopular. This provides powerful evidence that the impact of elections on political incentives in developing countries is conditioned by the existence of an electorally competitive opposition, while offering preliminary evidence that popular resistance to taxation by unpopular governments may be an important means by which taxpayers may generate pressure for improved governance.

Unemployment remains a major problem for economic policy at the beginning of the millennium. Taxes and Unemployment investigates how tax policy affects labor market outcomes in industrialized countries and to what extent it can be used to combat unemployment. In particular, the wage and employment consequences of tax rate variations, the impact of changes in tax progression and of comprehensive tax reforms are analyzed. It is shown that the employment effects of tax policy depend crucially on the institutional features of the labor market. These features are often country-specific and include the strength of collective bargaining institutions relative to other mechanisms of wage determination, the tax treatment of the jobless, the legal incidence of taxes and the exact specification of the tax system. Therefore, Taxes and Unemployment advocates an approach to reducing unemployment which is tailored to the specific characteristics of labor markets. Moreover, the analysis indicates that tax reforms need to be supported by other policy measures to regain full employment

"In einem Modell mit Lohnverhandlungen und unvollständiger Beobachtbarkeit
individueller Arbeitsanstrengungen zeigen wir, dass sich die verschiedenen
Motive bei der Lohnfindung – Verteilung von Renten zwischen Arbeitgeber und
Arbeitnehmern, Effizienzlohnerwägungen – sich in ihren Wirkungen gegenseitig
verstärken. Für die Auswirkungen der Steuerpolitik auf die Beschäftigung bedeutet
dies, dass eine progressivere Ausgestaltung des Steuersystems grundsätzlich
zu mehr Lohnmoderation führt. Da eine höhere Steuerprogression
jedoch zugleich die individuellen Anstrengungsanreize verringert, ist der Beschäftigungseffekt
einer Steuerreform, die die Progression erhöht, a priori nicht
eindeutig. Das aus der Lohnverhandlungsliteratur bekannte Ergebnis, dass
Steuerprogression gut für die Beschäftigung sei, lässt sich somit in einem allgemeineren
Modellrahmen nicht bestätigen. Zwar ist die Beschäftigung bei einem
moderat progressiven Steuersystem generell höher als bei einem proportionalen
Steuersystem, doch lassen sich negative Beschäftigungseffekte bei einer
weiteren Erhöhung der Steuerprogression nicht ausschließen." (Autorenreferat)

AbstractVariations in company taxes are analysed for a right‐to‐manage model, an efficient bargaining setting and a seniority approach. Taxes cannot be shifted forward by the risk‐neutral firm. Alternative income and bargaining power are allowed to vary with taxes. Employing asymmetric Nash solution it is found that changes in a payroll, revenue or profit tax can have differing implications for labour demand curve models and efficient bargaining solutions. This distinction might provide a novel basis for empirical work. Variations in bargaining power and‐within a labour demand curve setting‐the union's objective function do not change results.

This paper studies the historical origins of the federalist institutions in Mexico and Brazil. Using a bargaining game model, I argue that the type of commodities each country produced by the end of the nineteenth Century determined the negotiation power of local governments. This led to the buildup of opposite federalist institutions in both countries, which have persisted until nowadays. The model shows that countries with regions with more autonomy to produce and trade their commodities increase the local power to collect more taxes. While in Brazil coffee was the most important commodity, Mexico relied on mining products. Coffee was produced by local landowners who became economically powerful and they were able that export taxes were collected locally with the proclamation of the 1891 Constitution. Empirical estimates show that, after 1891, exporter states increased significantly their own fiscal revenue. On the other hand, mining was capital and technology intensive, inputs that were domestically scarce in Mexico. To finance those activities foreign investment was promoted centrally, weakening the relative power of local elites.

It is analyzed the impacts of outsourcing cost and wage tax progression under labor market imperfections with Nash wage bargaining and flexible outsourcing. With sufficiently strong (weak) labor market imperfection, lower outsourcing cost has a wage-moderating (wage-increasing) effect so that there is a negative (positive) effect on equilibrium unemployment. Higher tax progression, to keep the relative tax burden per worker constant, has a wage moderating and a positive effect on employment and negative effect on outsourcing.