Incentives to Pander: How Politicians Use Corporate Welfare for Political Gain

ISBN-13: 9781108418904 / Angielski / Twarda / 2018 / 268 str.

Nathan M. Jensen; Edmund Malesky

Opis

Why do politicians choose to employ targeted tax incentives to firms that are inefficient and distortionary? To claim political credit for local economic development.

Recenzje

'Is all politics local? In this intriguing study, Jensen and Malesky show that though separated by geography and political systems, politicians in the United States, Canada, Russia, and Vietnam all use fiscal policy to generate and sustain political support. The authors masterfully weave a variety of evidence - individual level surveys and original data on policymakers' incentives - to show how short term fiscal policies often have dramatically negative long term consequences.' David Leblang, University of Virginia

Spis treści

1. Introduction: the global competition for capital meets local politics; 2. A theory of the political use of investment incentives; 3. Incentives and the competition for investment within countries and around the world; 4. The economic case against investment incentives; 5. Economic or political competition? Allocation and oversight of US incentives; 6. Money for money: campaign contributions in exchange for financial incentives?; 7. Political pandering in the United States: a survey experiment on incentives and investment; 8. Pandering upward: tax incentives and credit claiming in authoritarian countries; 9. The distributional effects of investment incentives; 10. Potential policy solutions to the pandering problem; 11. Final thoughts.