IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jpbect/v6y2004i5p707-735.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Politically Determined Income Inequality and the Provision of Public Goods

Author

Listed:
  • Wojciech Olszewski
  • Howard Rosenthal

Abstract

Political processes may bring about Pareto improvements by increasing income inequality in a society that produces a public good by voluntary contributions. Proportional taxation funds a “governing agent.” The most endowed agent is the Condorcet winner for governing agent. When the tax rate can also be chosen by a vote, the ideal point of the agent with median initial endowment is the Condorcet winner under Cobb–Douglas utility. If Pareto improvements are possible, this ideal point corresponds to Pareto improvement. Pareto improvement may also be possible, even when a Leviathan set taxes, if there is deadweight loss from taxation. Pareto improvements are indeed always possible in “large” societies. On the other hand, no improvements may be possible if the initial distribution of wealth is very unequal in a “small” society, and Condorcet winners may not exist for other utility functions.

Suggested Citation

  • Wojciech Olszewski & Howard Rosenthal, 2004. "Politically Determined Income Inequality and the Provision of Public Goods," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 6(5), pages 707-735, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jpbect:v:6:y:2004:i:5:p:707-735
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9779.2004.00188.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9779.2004.00188.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1467-9779.2004.00188.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Richard Cornes & Roger Hartley & Todd Sandler, 1999. "Equilibrium Existence and Uniqueness in Public Good Models: An Elementary Proof via Contraction," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 1(4), pages 499-509, October.
    2. Patrick Bolton & Gérard Roland, 1997. "The Breakup of Nations: A Political Economy Analysis," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(4), pages 1057-1090.
    3. Itaya, Jun-ichi & de Meza, David & Myles, Gareth D., 1997. "In praise of inequality: public good provision and income distribution," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 57(3), pages 289-296, December.
    4. Bergstrom, Theodore & Blume, Lawrence & Varian, Hal, 1986. "On the private provision of public goods," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 25-49, February.
    5. Romer, Thomas, 1975. "Individual welfare, majority voting, and the properties of a linear income tax," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 4(2), pages 163-185, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Emanuele Teti & Alan Collins & John Sedgwick, 2014. "An offer they couldn't refuse (but probably should have): the ineffectiveness of Italian state subsidies to movie-making," Public Money & Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(3), pages 181-188, May.
    2. John Hartwick, 2006. "The Control Of Land Rent In The Fortified Farming Town," Working Paper 1096, Economics Department, Queen's University.
    3. Alexander Karaivanov, 2009. "Heterogeneity, returns to scale, and collective action," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 42(2), pages 771-807, May.
    4. Bardhan, Pranab & Ghatak, Maitreesh & Karaivanov, Alexander, 2007. "Wealth inequality and collective action," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(9), pages 1843-1874, September.
    5. Neslihan Uler, 2011. "Public goods provision, inequality and taxes," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 14(3), pages 287-306, September.
    6. Uler, Neslihan, 2009. "Public goods provision and redistributive taxation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(3-4), pages 440-453, April.
    7. Adam Bonica & Nolan McCarty & Keith T. Poole & Howard Rosenthal, 2013. "Why Hasn't Democracy Slowed Rising Inequality?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 27(3), pages 103-124, Summer.
    8. Sita Nataraj Slavov, 2014. "Public Versus Private Provision of Public Goods," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 16(2), pages 222-258, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 2002. "Political economics and public finance," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 24, pages 1549-1659, Elsevier.
    2. Cornes Richard & Sandler Todd, 2000. "Pareto-Improving Redistribution and Pure Public Goods," German Economic Review, De Gruyter, vol. 1(2), pages 169-186, May.
    3. Wolfgang Buchholz & Wolfgang Peters, 2001. "The overprovision anomaly of private public good supply," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 74(1), pages 63-78, February.
    4. Wolfgang Buchholz & Richard Cornes & Dirk Rübbelke, 2011. "Matching as a Cure for Underprovision of Voluntary Public Good Supply: Analysis and an Example," ANU Working Papers in Economics and Econometrics 2011-541, Australian National University, College of Business and Economics, School of Economics.
    5. Aulong, Stéphanie & Figuières, Charles & Thoyer, Sophie, 2011. "Agriculture production versus biodiversity protection: The impact of North-South unconditional transfers," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(8), pages 1499-1507, June.
    6. Indraneel Dasgupta & Ravi Kanbur, 2011. "Does philanthropy reduce inequality?," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 9(1), pages 1-21, March.
    7. Bandyopadhyay, Subhayu & Sandler, Todd, 2023. "Politically influenced counterterrorism policy and welfare efficiency," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    8. Tim Lohse & Julio R. Robledo & Ulrich Schmidt, 2012. "Self‐Insurance and Self‐Protection as Public Goods," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 79(1), pages 57-76, March.
    9. Jonathan Rodden, 2009. "Federalism and Inter-Regional Redistribution," Working Papers 2009/3, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    10. Richard Cornes & Roger Hartley, 2007. "Aggregative Public Good Games," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 9(2), pages 201-219, April.
    11. Jun-ichi Itaya & A.G. Schweinberger, 2006. "The public and private provision of pure public goods and the distortionary effects of income taxation: a political economy approach," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 39(3), pages 1023-1040, August.
    12. Gaube, Thomas, 2000. "Group size and free riding when private and public goods are gross substitutes," Bonn Econ Discussion Papers 13/2000, University of Bonn, Bonn Graduate School of Economics (BGSE).
    13. Villanacci, Antonio & Zenginobuz, E.Unal, 2005. "Existence and regularity of equilibria in a general equilibrium model with private provision of a public good," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(4-5), pages 617-636, August.
    14. Jeff Dayton-Johnson & Pranab Bardhan, 2002. "Inequality And Conservation On The Local Commons: A Theoretical Exercise," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(481), pages 577-602, July.
    15. Agathe Rouaix & Charles Figuières & Marc Willinger, 2015. "The trade-off between welfare and equality in a public good experiment," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 45(3), pages 601-623, October.
    16. Karen Pittel & Dirk T.G. Rübbelke, 2006. "Private provision of public goods: incentives for donations," Journal of Economic Studies, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 33(6), pages 497-519, November.
    17. Sabine Flamand, 2015. "Interregional transfers, group loyalty and the decentralization of redistribution," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 16(4), pages 307-330, November.
    18. Alexander Karaivanov, 2009. "Heterogeneity, returns to scale, and collective action," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 42(2), pages 771-807, May.
    19. Epple, Dennis & Romano, Richard E, 1996. "Public Provision of Private Goods," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 104(1), pages 57-84, February.
    20. Jaramillo, Fernando & Kempf, Hubert & Moizeau, Fabien, 2003. "Inequality and club formation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(5-6), pages 931-955, May.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jpbect:v:6:y:2004:i:5:p:707-735. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/apettea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.