Why the poor do not expropriate the rich: an old argument in new garb

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Roemer, JE
• 署名单位: University of California System; University of California Davis
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/S0047-2727(98)00042-5
• 发表日期: 1998
• 页码: 399-424
• 关键词: Political economy; Ideological parties; political equilibrium

摘要

We consider a political economy with two partisan parties; each party represents a given constituency of voters. If one party (Labour) represents poor voters and the other (Christian Democrats) rich voters, if a redistributive tax policy is the only issue, and if there are no incentive considerations, then in equilibrium the party representing the poor will propose a tax rate of unity. If, however, there are two issues - tax policy and religion, for instance then this is not generally the case. The analysis shows that, if a simple condition on the distribution of voter preferences holds, then, as the salience of the non-economic issue increases, the tax rate proposed by Labour in equilibrium will fall - possibly even to zero even though a majority of the population may have an ideal tax rate of unity. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.