Public goods,taxation, and the distribution of income over time

With given fiscal and collective choice institutions, the provision and concomitant financing of a public good affect individuals' saving decisions and, hence, may affect the course of the income distribution over time. This paper focuses on this problem for the case of a constitutional democracy in which the major fiscal institution is a set of fixed tax shares and the collective choice mechanism is simple majority voting. The redistributive aspects, rather than the equity aspects, of alternative tax structures are explored.