Preferences over Equality in the Presence of Costly Income Sorting

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Levy, Gilat; Razin, Ronny
• 署名单位: University of London; London School Economics & Political Science
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-MICROECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7669
• DOI: 10.1257/mic.20130031
• 发表日期: 2015
• 页码: 308-337
• 关键词: size distribution; social-mobility; long-run; MODEL; INEQUALITY; POOR; rich

摘要

We analyze preferences over redistribution in societies with costly (positive) sorting according to income. We identify a new motivation for redistribution, where individuals support taxation in order to reduce the incentives to sort. We characterize a simple condition over income distributions which implies that even relatively rich voters with income above the mean-will prefer full equality (and thus no sorting) to societies with costly sorting. We show that the condition is satisfied for relatively equal income distributions. We also relate the condition to several statistical properties which are satisfied by a large family of distribution functions.