Liberty, Equality, Religiosity1
نویسندگان
چکیده
In this paper we study the role of religiosity in political choices such as redistribution and individual liberties. To a standard model with consumption and effort, we add a third good: civil liberties with a cap established by law. More liberties, like divorce, abortion, gender parity, or gay marriage, may be considered good by the secular and detrimental by the religious individuals. With standard assumptions on individual preferences, one obtains that wider liberties increase the marginal utility of consumption to seculars, and decrease it to religious individuals. Labor supply and income are therefore lower for religious individuals in the presence of liberties. This implies a higher share of religious agents among the poor, consistent with evidence that the poor care more about ”moral values”. We analyze the preferences of individuals over taxation and the legal cap over liberties. We show that restriction of liberties can arise as an equilibrium outcome of a simple political process when society is sufficiently religious. Moreover, if economic polarisation is lower than religious polarisation, restriction of liberties results in lower taxation. Thus more religious societies will impose lower taxation both because (i) their productivity is lower, (ii) repression of liberties is more likely to arise and result in lower taxes. JEL-Classification: Key-words: Religiosity, Redistribution, Individual Liberties, Political Economy. 1Joan Esteban and Laura Mayoral gratefully acknowledge financial support from the AXA Research Fund, the Generalitat de Catalunya, and the CICYT (ECO2011-25293). We have benefitted from highly competent research assistance by Astrid Sneyers. 2Esteban: Institut d’Anàlisi Económica, CSIC, and Barcelona GSE; [email protected]. Levy : London School of Economics; [email protected]. Mayoral: Institut d’Anàlisi Económica, CSIC and Barcelona GSE; [email protected].
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