In this paper, we investigate whether voters' reactions to tax changes depend on their preferences for public spending, in order to increase our understanding of the relationship between accountability and the formation of public policy. Utilizing high‐quality survey data, we find that voters who, ex ante, prefer a small public sector punish incumbents who raise taxes, while voters who prefer a large public sector reward tax hikes. Our results indicate that Swedish voters do not necessarily consider tax hikes to be an indication of misbehaving incumbents and that public policy is formed as a result of competing interests between voters with different policy preferences, rather than only as a conflict between rent‐seeking politicians and voters.

中文翻译：

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投票，税收和异类偏好：瑞典地方选举的证据

在本文中，我们调查选民对税收变化的反应是否取决于他们对公共支出的偏好，以加深我们对问责制与公共政策形成之间关系的理解。利用高质量的调查数据，我们发现，事前更喜欢小型公共部门的选民会惩罚加税的在位者，而更喜欢大型公共部门的选民则奖励加税。我们的结果表明，瑞典选民不一定认为加税是对行为不当的征兆，而公共政策的形成是具有不同政策偏好的选民之间竞争利益的结果，而不是仅仅因为寻租政客与选民。