期刊名称：CORE Discussion Papers / Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (UCL), Louvain
出版年度：2008
卷号：1
出版社：Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (UCL), Louvain
摘要：We endow individuals that differ in skill levels and tastes for working with altruistic
preferences for redistribution in a voting model where a unidimensional redistributive
parameter is chosen by majority voting in a direct democracy. When altruistic preferences
are desert-sensitive, i.e. when there is a reluctance to redistribute from the hard-working to
the lazy, we show that lower levels of redistribution emerge in political equilibrium. We
provide empirical evidence, based on the ISSP 1992 dataset, that preferences for
redistribution are not purely selfish and that desert-sensitive motivations play a significant
role. We estimate that preferences for redistribution are significantly more desert-sensitive
in the US than in Europe. We believe that differences in desert-sensitive preferences for
redistribution help explain the different social contracts that prevail in both continents.
