Redistributive Policies (redistributive + policy)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Second Best Redistributive Policies: The Case Of International Trade

JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMIC THEORY, Issue 1 2001
Roger Guesnerie
The paper presents a brief review of recent work that focuses on the normative economics of international trade. In a Heckscher,Ohlin-like economy, with skilled and unskilled workers, the available redistributive tools (that include income taxation) are not powerful enough to allow the separation of efficiency and equity issues, and "production efficiency" is no longer desirable. At a social optimum that calls for redistribution toward the unskilled workers, the social value of the unskilled intensive good is necessarily smaller than its production price. This finding allows us to unify existing results and suggests conjectures. [source]


Framing U.S. Redistributive Policies: Tough Love for Poor Women and Tax Cuts for Seniors

ANALYSES OF SOCIAL ISSUES & PUBLIC POLICY, Issue 1 2009
Wendy M. Limbert
In recent years, income inequality in the U.S. has risen to historically high levels. Redistributive policies that differentially benefit lower- versus upper-income households play a significant role in the widening economic gap. A discourse analysis of 284 articles from five major U.S. newspapers was conducted to examine dominant media framing of the Bush administration's welfare reauthorization proposal and the 2003 dividend tax cuts. Guided by critical theory (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001;,Wing, 1997), we found that dominant issue frames favored reduced support for progressive welfare policies and increased support for tax cuts. Implications for pursuing an economic justice agenda are discussed. [source]


Tax and Education Policy in a Heterogeneous-Agent Economy: What Levels of Redistribution Maximize Growth and Efficiency?

ECONOMETRICA, Issue 2 2002
Roland Bénabou
This paper studies the effects of progressive income taxes and education finance in a dynamic heterogeneous-agent economy. Such redistributive policies entail distortions to labor supply and savings, but also serve as partial substitutes for missing credit and insurance markets. The resulting tradeoffs for growth and efficiency are explored, both theoretically and quantitatively, in a model that yields complete analytical solutions. Progressive education finance always leads to higher income growth than taxes and transfers, but at the cost of lower insurance. Overall efficiency is assessed using a new measure that properly reflects aggregate resources and idiosyncratic risks but, unlike a standard social welfare function, does not reward equality per se. Simulations using empirical parameter estimates show that the efficiency costs and benefits of redistribution are generally of the same order of magnitude, resulting in plausible values for the optimal rates. Aggregate income and aggregate welfare provide only crude lower and upper bounds around the true efficiency tradeoff. [source]


Factor mobility and fiscal policy in the EU: policy issues and analytical approaches

ECONOMIC POLICY, Issue 31 2000
David E. Wildasin
Increased integration of labour and capital markets creates significant challenges for the welfare states of modern Europe. Taxation of capital and labour that finances extensive programmes of cash and in-kind redistribution creates incentives for capital owners and workers to locate in regions where they obtain favourable fiscal treatment. Competition among countries for mobile resources constrains their ability to alter the distribution of income and may lead to reductions in the size and scope of redistributive policies. Mobility of labour and capital is imperfect, however. Recent trends indicate that labour and capital are neither perfectly mobile nor perfectly immobile, but rather adjust gradually to market conditions and economic policies. This paper presents an explicitly dynamic analysis showing that governments can achieve some redistribution when it is costly for factors of production to relocate. As the costs of factor mobility fall, however, the effectiveness of redistributive policies is more limited, and governments have weaker incentives to pursue them. Liberalized immigration policies, EU enlargement, and other steps that promote integration of the factors markets of Western Europe with those of surrounding regions thus present a challenge to policy-makers if they also wish to maintain fiscal systems with extensive redistribution. [source]


A Rational Choice Approach to Explaining Policy Preferences and Concern for Representing Women among State Legislators

POLITICS & POLICY, Issue 1 2010
DONALD E. WHISTLER
Rational choice theory predicts that women, when significantly involved in the production of private competitive goods and services, will adopt the same self-interested political orientation as similarly economically situated men. Guided by this approach, this nationwide survey of state legislators finds that competitive occupational background significantly reduces support for representing distributive,redistributive policy among both women and men legislators. However, it also finds that women legislators in general, as well as women holding leadership positions, retain a significant concern for representing women. Democratic Party affiliation and noncompetitive occupational background predict support for distributive,redistributive policies among women and men legislators, while only Democratic Party affiliation predicts concern for representing women among women and men legislators. Other explanatory variables (i.e., lower education, liberal ideology, African-Americans, lower-socioeconomic status districts, and political ambition) are in the direction hypothesized to influence representing distributive,redistributive policies and women but are not all statistically significant. La teoría de la decisión racional predice que cuando las mujeres se involucran significativamente en la producción de bienes y servicios competitivos, adoptarán la misma orientación política de búsqueda de sus intereses personales que los hombres similarmente situados económicamente. Guiados por este enfoque, esta encuesta nacional de los legisladores estatales encuentra que los antecedentes profesionales competitivos reducen significativamente el apoyo entre mujeres así como hombres legisladores para representar políticas distributivas-redistributivas. Sin embargo, encuentra que en general, las mujeres legisladoras, así como aquellas mujeres que desempeñan posiciones de autoridad, conservan una preocupación significativa por representar a las mujeres. Por su parte, tanto afiliación al Partido Demócrata como antecedentes ocupacionales no-competitivos, predicen apoyo entre las mujeres y los hombres legisladores, a políticas distributivas-redistributivas, mientras que sólo afiliación al Partido Demócrata predice preocupación entre las mujeres y los hombres legisladores por representar a las mujeres. Otras variables que pueden explicar esto (i.e., educación baja, ideología liberal, Afroamericanos, distritos con bajo nivel socioeconómico, y ambición política) están en la dirección hipotetizada para influir la representación de las políticas distributivas-redistributivas y de mujeres, pero no todas son estadísticamente significativas. [source]


Asians as the model minority: Implications for US Government's policies

ASIAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 1 2010
Melody Manchi Chao
Asian Americans are often perceived as a ,model minority', an ethnic minority that are high achieving, hardworking, self-reliant, law-abiding, as well as having few social and mental health problems. Although the impact of the model minority image on the US government's redistributive policies is a widely contested topic in public discourses, there has been little research on the association between the model minority image, people's worldviews, and attitudes towards the US government's redistributive policies. In an experiment that measured American participants' worldviews and manipulated the salience of the model minority image, we have demonstrated that those who believed in a malleable social reality were relatively unsupportive of government policies that help the Asian American (vs African American) communities. Theoretical and practical implications of this finding are discussed. [source]


A Rational Choice Approach to Explaining Policy Preferences and Concern for Representing Women among State Legislators

POLITICS & POLICY, Issue 1 2010
DONALD E. WHISTLER
Rational choice theory predicts that women, when significantly involved in the production of private competitive goods and services, will adopt the same self-interested political orientation as similarly economically situated men. Guided by this approach, this nationwide survey of state legislators finds that competitive occupational background significantly reduces support for representing distributive,redistributive policy among both women and men legislators. However, it also finds that women legislators in general, as well as women holding leadership positions, retain a significant concern for representing women. Democratic Party affiliation and noncompetitive occupational background predict support for distributive,redistributive policies among women and men legislators, while only Democratic Party affiliation predicts concern for representing women among women and men legislators. Other explanatory variables (i.e., lower education, liberal ideology, African-Americans, lower-socioeconomic status districts, and political ambition) are in the direction hypothesized to influence representing distributive,redistributive policies and women but are not all statistically significant. La teoría de la decisión racional predice que cuando las mujeres se involucran significativamente en la producción de bienes y servicios competitivos, adoptarán la misma orientación política de búsqueda de sus intereses personales que los hombres similarmente situados económicamente. Guiados por este enfoque, esta encuesta nacional de los legisladores estatales encuentra que los antecedentes profesionales competitivos reducen significativamente el apoyo entre mujeres así como hombres legisladores para representar políticas distributivas-redistributivas. Sin embargo, encuentra que en general, las mujeres legisladoras, así como aquellas mujeres que desempeñan posiciones de autoridad, conservan una preocupación significativa por representar a las mujeres. Por su parte, tanto afiliación al Partido Demócrata como antecedentes ocupacionales no-competitivos, predicen apoyo entre las mujeres y los hombres legisladores, a políticas distributivas-redistributivas, mientras que sólo afiliación al Partido Demócrata predice preocupación entre las mujeres y los hombres legisladores por representar a las mujeres. Otras variables que pueden explicar esto (i.e., educación baja, ideología liberal, Afroamericanos, distritos con bajo nivel socioeconómico, y ambición política) están en la dirección hipotetizada para influir la representación de las políticas distributivas-redistributivas y de mujeres, pero no todas son estadísticamente significativas. [source]