The regressive nature of consumption taxes poses a challenge to partisan theory. Using data for up to 20 OECD countries in the period 1970-2003 this article aims to explore the question of whether the idea that social democratic governments typically have to compromise on policy goals and core constituency interests to make themselves more appealing to the median voter necessitates the use of r...

the regressive nature of consumption taxes poses a challenge to partisan theory. using data for up to 20 oecd countries in the period 1970-2003 this article aims to explore the question of whether the idea that social democratic governments typically have to compromise on policy goals and core constituency interests to make themselves more appealing to the median voter necessitates the use of r...

Despite the centrality of the median voter prediction in political economy models, overwhelming empirical evidence shows that legislators regularly take positions that diverge significantly from the preferences of the median voter in their districts. However, all these empirical studies to date lack the necessary data to directly measure the preferences of the median voter. We utilize a unique ...

This paper investigates the ways in which grants can be incorporated into the median voter model of local government expenditure. Grants can either be viewed as having income or price effects. Oakes suggested grants might affect the average price as perceived by the median voter. Our initial estimates seem to support this idea. However, econometric problems require a re-estimation of the model....