This paper examines politicians' stated preferences on tax reforms which aim to bring about a given change in revenue. The paper starts from a simple framework in which politicians are vote maximisers, analyses how disequilibria may affect tax choices and considers possible asymmetries in...

Under instrumental voting closer elections are expected to have higher turnout. Under expressive voting, however, turnout may increase with decreasing closeness when voters have a preference for winners. An empirical test using data on Belgian municipal elections supports this. We find that...

Analysing data for the 1995 Regional Elections in Brussels we show how the layout of the ballot affects voting behaviour as reflected by the candidates' preferential votes. We discuss how this special case of Ballot Position Effects can be reconciled with existing models of (expressive) voting....

This paper analyses whether and to what extent politicians manipulate tax structures strategically in order to win elections or for ideological purposes. We introduce an indicator for tax structure turbulence which measures the degree to which a country's tax structure changes from one year to...

This paper examines politicians' stated preferences on tax reforms which aim to bring about a given change in revenue. The paper starts from a simple framework inwhich politicians are vote maximisers, analyses how disequilibria may affect tax choices and considers possible asymmetries in...

Fiscal illusion refers to a systematically biased perception of fiscal parameters due to demand-side error/ignorance or supply-side abusive behavior. As such, it is a component of a more general tax choice framework. This paper focuses predominantly on the empirical estimation of the four major...