Arbeitspapier
Compulsory Voting and Public Finance
Conventional wisdom suggests that compulsory voting lowers the influence of specialinterest groups and leads to policies that are better for less privileged citizens, who often abstain when voting is voluntary. To scrutinize this conventional wisdom, I study public goods provision and rents to special-interest groups in a probabilistic voting model with campaign contributions in which citizens can decide how much political information to acquire, and whether to vote or abstain. I find that compulsory voting, modeled as an increase in abstention costs, raises the share of poorly informed and impressionable voters, thereby making special-interest groups more influential and increasing their rents. Total government spending and taxes increase as well, while the effect on public goods provision is ambiguous. Compulsory voting may thus lead to policy changes that harm even less privileged citizens.
- Sprache
-
Englisch
- Erschienen in
-
Series: Working Paper ; No. 10.04
- Klassifikation
-
Wirtschaft
Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
Positive Analysis of Policy Formulation and Implementation
Public Economics: General
- Thema
-
Compulsory Voting
Special-Interest Politics
Fiscal Policies
Wahlverhalten
Interessenpolitik
Finanzpolitik
Neue politische Ökonomie
Theorie
- Ereignis
-
Geistige Schöpfung
- (wer)
-
Hodler, Roland
- Ereignis
-
Veröffentlichung
- (wer)
-
Swiss National Bank, Study Center Gerzensee
- (wo)
-
Gerzensee
- (wann)
-
2010
- Handle
- Letzte Aktualisierung
-
10.03.2025, 11:41 MEZ
Datenpartner
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. Bei Fragen zum Objekt wenden Sie sich bitte an den Datenpartner.
Objekttyp
- Arbeitspapier
Beteiligte
- Hodler, Roland
- Swiss National Bank, Study Center Gerzensee
Entstanden
- 2010
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