Globalization and capital taxation in consensus and majoritarian democracies
Globalization and capital taxation in consensus and majoritarian democracies
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DOI：
10.1353/wp.2004.0004
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发表时间：
2003-10-01
期刊：
影响因子：
5
通讯作者：
Hays, JC
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Hays, JC
杜安·斯万克（Duane Swank）在他最近出版的关于全球化的书中对国际资本流动和资本税收的研究进行了调查，他得出结论：“证据的重要性导致了一种意想不到的印象，即国际资本流动可能与资本税收无关（甚至正相关）。“（1）这可以说是关于全球化的文献中最重要的发现之一，而且正如斯万克指出的那样，是出乎意料的发现。关于资本税的争论，或许比其他任何争论都更明显地划分了两种人，一种人对全球化的国内政治后果持悲观态度，另一种人认为政府在全球经济中仍有很大的回旋余地。尽管认为与全球化相关的税收约束很弱可能令人放心，但这一结论往往是基于两个有问题的假设之一：（1）全球化意味着资本税的逐底竞争，或者（2）社会民主社团主义国家的税收制度受到国际资本流动的破坏最大。根据这些假设设计研究的学者要么是在寻找错误的东西，要么是在错误的地方寻找。我在这篇文章中认为，全球化将导致（部分）资本税趋同--不是趋同到资本税率现有分布的底部，而是趋同到接近中心的某个地方。此外，最依赖资本税的国家也将感受到收入的减少。这些国家是自由市场经济的多数民主国家，而不是社会民主社团主义国家。在第一部分中，我回顾了关于全球化和资本税的争论，特别强调了反对税收政策趋同的理论案例。我提出了一些挑战这一立场的数据，然后认为，共识民主可以帮助解释我们观察到的令人困惑的经验模式。在第二部分中，我建立了一个小型开放经济民主国家的博弈论模型，该模型将共识和多数主义政治之间的区别结合起来，以理论化政治制度如何调解全球化压力。该模型预测，全球化，特别是增加国际资本流动性lvvill有最大的负面影响，资本税率在相对封闭和资本丰富的国家与多数政治制度。我在第三部分用定量和定性的证据来检验这个和其他预测，然后在结论中讨论未来研究的途径。
AFTER surveying the research on international capital mobility and capital taxation in his recent book on globalization, Duane Swank concludes: "The weight of the evidence leads to the unanticipated impression that international capital mobility may be unrelated (or even positively related) to capital taxation."(1) This is arguably one of the most important and, as Swank notes, unexpected findings to come out of the literature on globalization. The debate over capital taxation, perhaps more than any other, clearly divides those who are pessimistic about the domestic political consequences of globalization and those who believe governments still have substantial room to maneuver in the global economy.While it may be reassuring to think that the tax constraints associated with globalization are weak, this conclusion is often based on one of two problematic assumptions: (1) that globalization implies a race to the bottom in capital taxes or (2) that the tax systems of the social democratic corporatist countries are undermined the most by international capital mobility. Scholars who design their research on these assumptions are either looking for the wrong thing or searching in the wrong places. I argue in this article that globalization will lead to (partial) capital tax convergence-not to the bottom but to somewhere near the center of the existing distribution of capital tax rates. Moreover, the countries that are the most dependent on capital taxes are the ones that will feel the revenue pinch. These are the majoritarian democracies with liberal market economies not the social democratic corporatist countries.The article is organized as follows. In the first section, I review the debate over globalization and capital taxation, placing particular emphasis on the theoretical case against tax policy convergence. I present some data that challenge this position and then argue that consensus democracy can help account for the puzzling empirical patterns we observe. In the second section I build a game-theoretic model of a small open-economy democracy that incorporates the distinction between consensus and majoritarian polities in order to theorize about how political institutions might mediate globalization pressures. The model predicts that globalization-specifically increased international capital mobilitr-lvvill have the greatest negative impact on capital tax rates in relatively closed and capital-rich countries with majoritarian political institutions. I test this and other predictions with both quantitative and qualitative evidence in the third section and then in the conclusion discuss avenues for future research.