a r t i c l e i n f o This paper concerns redistribution and public good provision under asymmetric information, which are here ingredients of a policy-problem facing each member state (nation) of an economic federation with decentralized leadership. Each member state is assumed to have its own redistributive policy and pattern of public consumption, whereas the federal level redistributes (ex-...

the present paper examines the mitigating effect of monetary and fiscal policies on the “growth laffer curve” (glc) using a panel data of 38 high income countries over the period 2003-2012. adopting generalised method of moments (gmm) estimators, the paper finds evidence substantiating the presence of an inverted-u glc. moreover, the evidence suggests that the glc shifts downward by employing e...

BACKGROUND Prices are an important determinant of food choices. Consequently, food price policies (subsidies and/or taxes) are proposed to improve the nutritional quality of diets. The aim of the present study was to explore the impact of food price policies on the expenditures and nutritional quality of the food baskets chosen by low- and medium-income households. METHODS Experimental econom...

Bigger governments raise the possibilities for corruption; more corruption may in turn raise the support for redistributive policies that intend to correct the inequality and injustice generated by corruption. We formalize these insights in a simple dynamic model. A positive feedback from past to current levels of taxation and corruption arises either when wealth originating in corruption and r...

The paper assumes a continuum of two period-lived agents; agents are identical except for inherited income. Young agents allocate their inheritance between consumption and investment in human capital under uncertainty. In the second period they receive a wage proportional to the accumulated human capital and invest in offspring. Two main results arise: a low earning per unit of human capital le...

We model political competition as a contest between parties that represent constituents, and which announce policies in a two-dimensional policy space; the first dimension concerns the degree of redistribution, and the second, the race or immigration issue. Given the distribution of voter preferences on this space, a political equilibrium is determined. We study the effect that racist or anti-i...

We use responses to survey questions in the 2010 Italian Survey of Household Income and Wealth that ask consumers how much of an unexpected transitory income change they would consume. The marginal propensity to consume (MPC) is 48 percent on average. We also find substantial heterogeneity in the distribution, as households with low cash-on-hand exhibit a much higher MPC than affluent household...