ELECTORAL SYSTEMS AND INEQUALITIES IN GOVERNMENT INTERVENTIONS

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Genicot, Garance; Bouton, Laurent; Castanheira, Micael
• 署名单位: Georgetown University; Universite Libre de Bruxelles
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1542-4766
• DOI: 10.1093/jeea/jvab016
• 发表日期: 2021
• 页码: 3154-3206
• 关键词: POLITICAL-ECONOMY; protectionist bias; proportional representation; majoritarian politics; public-goods; pork-barrel; incentives; institutions; redistribution; expenditures

摘要

This paper studies the political determinants of inequalities in government interventions under majoritarian (MAJ) and proportional representation (PR) systems. We propose a probabilistic voting model of electoral competition with highly targetable government interventions and heterogeneous localities. We uncover a novel relative electoral sensitivity effect that affects government interventions only under MAJ systems. This effect tends to reduce inequality in government interventions under MAJ systems when districts are composed of sufficiently homogeneous localities. This effect goes against the conventional wisdom that MAJ systems are necessarily more conducive to inequality than PR systems. We illustrate the empirical relevance of our results with numerical simulations on possible reforms of the US Electoral College.