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作者：Cruces, Guillermo; Perez-Truglia, Ricardo; Tetaz, Martin
作者单位：National University of La Plata; IZA Institute Labor Economics; Harvard University
摘要：Individual perceptions of income distribution play a vital role in political economy and public finance models, yet there is little evidence regarding their origins or accuracy. This study examines how individuals form these perceptions and explores their potential impact on preferences for redistribution. A tailored household survey provides original evidence on systematic biases in individuals' evaluations of their own relative position in the income distribution. The study discusses one of ...
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作者：Che, Jiahua; Chung, Kim-Sau; Qiao, Xue
作者单位：Chinese University of Hong Kong; University of Minnesota System; University of Minnesota Twin Cities; Tsinghua University
摘要：There are three signature features of autocracies. First, there is a wide variety across autocracies in terms of economic performance: some do much better and some much worse than democracies. Second, economic performance of a given autocracy is more sensitive to leader quality, and exhibits higher volatility. Third, all autocracies, good or bad, tend to have weaker civil societies than democracies do. We attribute these features to the core of the autocratic political institution: the incumbe...
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作者：Gersovitz, Mark
作者单位：Johns Hopkins University
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作者：Fleurbaey, Marc; Ponthiere, Gregory
作者单位：Princeton University; Paris School of Economics; Universite PSL; Ecole Normale Superieure (ENS)
摘要：Common sense supports prevention policies aimed at improving survival prospects among the population. It is also widely acknowledged that an early death is a serious disadvantage, and that attention should be paid to the compensation of short-lived individuals. This paper re-examines the compatibility of those two concerns: prevention against early death and compensation for early death. We show that, under mild conditions, no social ordering on allocations can satisfy a concern for prevention...
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作者：Burgess, David F.
作者单位：Western University (University of Western Ontario)
摘要：This paper shows that, in an economy with an exogenous rate of return and a given capital income tax distortion, and with lump sum taxes as the marginal tax instrument, the SOC and MCF criteria both correctly identify all worthwhile projects if the criteria are properly applied. The equivalence between the SOC and MCF criteria continues to hold i) if distortionary taxes are used to balance the budget, and ii) if the rate of return to capital is endogenous. Apparent differences between the SOC ...
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作者：Currie, Janet; Lin, Wanchuan; Meng, Juanjuan
作者单位：Princeton University; Peking University
摘要：This paper asks whether gift exchange generates externalities for people outside of the bilateral relationship between the gift giver and recipient, and whether the nature of this relationship is affected by social networks. We examine this question in the context of a field experiment in urban Chinese hospital outpatient clinics. We first show that when patients give a small gift, doctors reciprocate with better service and a fewer unnecessary prescriptions of antibiotics. We then show that g...
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作者：Vendrik, Maarten C. M.
作者单位：Maastricht University
摘要：Adaptation, anticipation and social-reference effects on happiness are strongly interrelated phenomena. However, in the existing empirical literature these phenomena are mainly studied in isolation from each other. Therefore, using SOEP panel data for the years 1984-2007, this study offers an integrated investigation of the implications of these three phenomena for the dynamics of individual life satisfaction. I focus on the short and long-run effects of income and social reference income, but...
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作者：Lin, Liguo
作者单位：Shanghai University of Finance & Economics
摘要：This paper investigates how industrial plants react to inspections conducted by environmental authorities under the pollution levy (taxation) regulation in China. Contrary to studies in the United States and Canada (Magat and Viscusi, 1990; Laplante and Rilstone, 1996), and previous studies in China (Dasgupta et al., 2001), we find that inspections increase plants' self-reported pollution by 3.45%. We provide a model to analyze plants' strategic reactions to the pollution levy regulation in Ch...
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作者：Brender, Adi; Drazen, Allan
作者单位：Bank of Israel; University System of Maryland; University of Maryland College Park; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：Do elections allow voters to express their policy preferences, with change in government spending patterns following the election of a new leader? How long does it take for the composition of government spending to change following a change in leadership? Or, do significant spending changes precede (rather than follow) elections, with incumbents using significant changes in spending composition as an electoral tool? Using a dataset we created on government expenditure composition in 71 democra...
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作者：Christiansen, Nels
作者单位：Trinity University
摘要：This paper examines the incentives of voters to appoint legislators with different preferences from their own. The paper adopts an underlying legislative bargaining model proposed by Volden and Wiseman (2007) in which legislators with heterogeneous preferences divide a fixed budget between a public good and pork projects (local public goods). We show that voters have an incentive to strategically delegate to affect how the budget is divided at the legislative level. When voters' preferences fo...
