Comment on Comparative Politics and Public Finance

Comment on “Comparative Politics and PublicFinance”yJłrgen Juel AndersenNovember, 2007AbstractModelling and comparing procedures for legislative bargaining inlegislatures, Persson, Roland and Tabellini (2000) show that presi-dential regime types produce lower taxes, a lower level of governmentspendingandlessdiversionbypoliticiansthandoparliamentaryregimetypes. However, these predictions rests on speci c assumptions aboutthe intensity for public goods not pointed out by the authors namelythatpreferencesforpublicgoodsarerelativelyweak. Ishowthatwhenpreferences for public goods are strong, the size of government and thelevelsofdiversionandredistributioninthetworegimetypesareequal-ized.Keywords:Politicaleconomy. Constitution. Comparativepolitics.JEL: H3, H4, H5.I am grateful to Egil Matsen and Ragnar Torvik for comments and discussions.yNorwegian University of Science and Technology. Address: NTNU, Department ofEconomics, Dragvoll, NO-7491 Trondheim, Norway. Phone: +47 7359 8337. Fax: +477359 6954. E-mail: jorgen.juel.andersen@svt.ntnu.no.11 IntroductionIn a very interesting paper published in the Journal of Political Economy,Persson, Roland and Tabellini (2000) propose a model to analyze the com-parative politics of the size and composition of government spending. Pers-son, RolandandTabellini…ndthattherulesguidingtheprocessesoflegisla-tivebargaininginparliamentaryandpresidential-congressionalregimetypesshape the incentives of legislators and ...