Tax Innovation in the States: Capitalizing on Political Opportunity

Berry, Frances Stokes; Berry, William D.

doi:10.2307/2111588

Cited by 392 publications

(291 citation statements)

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“…The adoption of new taxes by other states may help to shield state legislators from the political costs of such policies. Berry and Berry (1992) find that their empirical evidence is consistent across tax instruments and different periods of analysis throughout the twentieth century and are able to justify the fiscal health explanation, the election cycle explanation, and the regional diffusion explanation as being valid explanations of state tax innovation. Berry and Berry (1992) also consider the effects of economic development on state tax adoption.…”

Section: Determinants Of Taxationmentioning

confidence: 71%

“…Berry and Berry (1992) find that their empirical evidence is consistent across tax instruments and different periods of analysis throughout the twentieth century and are able to justify the fiscal health explanation, the election cycle explanation, and the regional diffusion explanation as being valid explanations of state tax innovation. Berry and Berry (1992) also consider the effects of economic development on state tax adoption. The economic development theory suggests that an increase in the private resource base-i.e., as reflected in increases in population, businesses in a state, or income-should also result in an increased probability of state tax adoption.…”

Section: Determinants Of Taxationmentioning

confidence: 71%

“…In an effort to test empirically some of the more common theories, Berry and Berry (1992) use pooled cross-sectional time-series data and events history analysis to test five explanations of state adoption of income taxes, gasoline taxes, or any taxes. They find particularly strong support for the role of politics in state tax adoption.…”

Section: Determinants Of Taxationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Fiscal Policy in the American States

Garand

Ulrich

2013

Oxford Handbooks Online

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This chapter reviews the recent scholarly literature on fiscal policy in the American states, focusing on several important topics: (1) size and growth of the public sector in the states; (2) how states determine expenditure and revenue priorities; (3) the politics of state budget deficits and surpluses; (4) the effects of fiscal policy on various political, economic, and social outcomes. The pace of scholarly research by political scientists on state fiscal policy has slowed considerably during the first decade of the 2000s, resulting in a leveling off of scientific progress in understanding state fiscal policy. There is a lot we still do not know about the size of the public sector, state spending and revenue policy, state deficits and surpluses, and the effects of state fiscal policy. We conclude with a discussion of unanswered research questions as a means of building an agenda for future research on state fiscal policy.

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Section: Determinants Of Taxationmentioning

confidence: 71%

Section: Determinants Of Taxationmentioning

confidence: 71%

Section: Determinants Of Taxationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Fiscal Policy in the American States

Garand

Ulrich

2013

Oxford Handbooks Online

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“…Box-Steffensmeier and Jones (1997, 2004b) corroborate this by affirming that the employment of statistical analysis across a large number of cases can generate improved confidence in the results. Berry and Berry (1990, 1992, and Collier and Messick (1975) emphasize that the model allows a more robust analysis of the internal and external aspects of diffusion, which in turn makes the entire research project more consistent.…”

Section: Theoretical Approaches and Policy Diffusionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Political Competition and the Diffusion of Conditional Cash Transfers in Brazil

Coêlho

2012

Bras. Political Sci. Rev.

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“…5 We use NIPA data because these exist on a quarterly basis (as opposed to OECD revenue data) and thus allow us to analyse the impact of tax variables on quarterly presidential approval ratings. The seven lines in the figure display revenues 3 Relatedly, it has been shown that the introduction of new taxes is significantly less likely in election years (Mikesell, 1978;Berry, 1988;Berry and Berry, 1992;Ashworth et al, 2006).…”

Section: Evolution Of the Us Tax Burden And Tax Structurementioning

confidence: 99%

Taxation and presidential approval: separate effects from tax burden and tax structure turbulence?

Geys

Vermeir

2007

Public Choice

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Previous research has established that taxation may entail significant electoral costs to politicians. This literature, however, focuses exclusively on the effect of the tax burden. In this paper, we test the hypothesis that both the level of the tax burden and the change in the tax structure affect the US president's approval ratings (over the period . Our results support this proposition. Specifically, we find a negative impact from the levels of the tax burden and the deficit as well as from changes in the tax structure on presidential approval ratings. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may IntroductionTaxation -and, more generally, revenue generation -by the government is necessary for the provision of public goods. Still, although we like to benefit from publicly provided goods, none of us enjoys paying the taxes to finance them. Politicians are also likely to have an ambiguous relation with taxation. They might well support extra revenues as it helps them to achieve their aims (be those providing public goods or rent-seeking), but generally shun the political costs inherently associated with these revenues. The existence of such political costs of taxation has been analysed through vote and popularity functions (VP-functions). This literature generally supports the idea that increases in tax revenues have a negative effect on a politician's popularity and re-election odds (e.g. Niskanen, 1979;Besley and Case, 1995).While identifying taxation as an important determinant of election outcomes and approval ratings, the literature on VP-functions disregards the possible effects of tax structure reforms. Nonetheless, in his seminal work on the politics of taxation, Rose (1985) argues that the popularity and re-election odds of incumbents are maximised, ceteris paribus, under a stable and unchanging tax system (see also Rose and Karran, 1987). The underlying argument is that tax changes have non-negligible fixed costs, irrespective of whether taxes are increased or lowered. These costs arise because the political rewards from those who benefit from tax structure changes are likely to be lower than the electoral punishment by those who lose in the reform. Indeed, individuals generally dislike losses more than they appreciate gains (cfr. the grievance asymmetry, Mueller, 1970). Also, when tax reform takes place the electorate's 2 attention is drawn to the least popular side of the government, i.e. the (high) tax burden (Peters, 1991).Ashworth and Heyndel...

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Tax Innovation in the States: Capitalizing on Political Opportunity

Cited by 392 publications

References 28 publications

Fiscal Policy in the American States

Fiscal Policy in the American States

Political Competition and the Diffusion of Conditional Cash Transfers in Brazil

Taxation and presidential approval: separate effects from tax burden and tax structure turbulence?

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