Essays in the comparative political economy oftaxation and redistribution

This dissertation consists of four self-contained essays in the comparative political economy of taxation and redistribution. The first essay empirically explores the underlying dynamics of the well known empirical regularity that democracies that have proportional electoral systems spend substantively more on welfare policies than those that have majoritarian systems. The essay contributes to the literature by bringing new micro-level evidence to bear on theories seeking to explain the phenomena, and as such provides a stronger empirical foundation for evaluating the theories in question. Overall, I find robust support for more proportionality leading to more income-based voting. The second essay provides a theoretically-driven conceptualization of absolute and relative individual income shifts and argues that the conceptualization of income shifts has important implications for how we think about the effects of the economy on redistributive preferences. The essay presents a general theoretical framework, which accounts for empirical findings on both the effects of economic mobility and macroeconomic cycles on redistribution. Based on a novel experimental ``redistribution game'', the results indicate that expected shifts in absolute and relative income have opposite effects on preferences. The third essay argues that employment insecurity as a critical and salient factor determining incumbent support and voter turnout. The theory developed goes beyond existing approaches by providing a better conceptualized measure of salient economic experiences, as well as highlighting that the economy can often serve both as a valance and positional issue, which can have important implications for the effects of the economy on voting behavior. Finally, the fourth essay develops and empirically tests a theory of the domestic political foundations of the adoption of the value added tax, or VAT. Building on the recent literature on the relationship between regressive taxation and welfare state generosity, I hypothesize that generous welfare states, left-wing governments, corporatist labor market institutions, and consensus building political institutions should all increase the probability of early adoption of the VAT. I find strong support for the effects of corporatism and proportional representation on early adoption of the VAT. Conversely, I find no support for the proposition that welfare state generosity or left-wing government partisanship facilitate early adoption of the VAT.