Government Size, the Role of Commitments*
研究长期承诺如何影响政府支出动态，用中位选民模型解释OECD国家税率先升后稳的模式，指出公共支出持续性和新干预下限推动政府规模增长，而选民偏好最终遏制增长。
Abstract We explore the hypothesis that long‐term commitments affect the dynamics of government expenditure. With the aid of a simple median‐voter model we interpret the pattern of increasing‐then‐constant tax rates observed in OECD countries in the second half of the last century: persistence of public expenditure and a lower bound on new interventions will push government size upward, and preferences of the electorate put a halt to this growth at some point. In this view, the fiscal policy variable is seen to consist of only a part of the total expenditure, the rest being predetermined by its past level.