Political Practices for Empowerment and Redistribution

Political Economy of Redistribution∗

It is often argued that additional constraints on redistribution such as granting veto power to more players in the society makes property better protected from expropriation. We use a legislative bargainingtype model to demonstrate that this intuition may be flawed. Increasing the number of veto players or raising the supermajority requirement for redistribution may reduce protection on the eq...

Political Models of Redistribution

Political preferences for redistribution in Sweden

We examine preferences for redistribution inherent in Swedish tax policy during 1971–2012 using the inverse optimal tax approach. The income distribution is carefully characterized with the help of administrative register data, and we employ behavioral elasticities reflecting the perceived distortionary effects of taxation. The revealed social welfare weights are high for non-workers, small for...

Economic Inequality, Redistribution, and Political Inequality

Based on individual and macro-level data collected in 18 OECD democracies, we find that income inequality at the macrolevel depresses electoral participation. At the level of individual citizens, we find that the effects of income differentials are linear: individuals who are below the median income in society are less likely to participate in elections, while those above the median income are ...

The Political Economy of Redistribution under Democracy∗

We ask what redistributions of income and assets are feasible in a democracy, given the initial assets and their distribution. The question is motivated by the possibility that if redistribution is insufficient for the poor or excessive for the rich, they may turn against democracy. In turn, if no redistribution simultaneously satisfies the poor and the wealthy, democracy cannot be sustained. H...