IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/buspol/v18y2016i01p85-96_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

An allegory of the political influence of the top 1%

Author

Listed:
  • De Donder, Philippe
  • Roemer, John E.

Abstract

We study how rich shareholders use their political influence to deregulate firms that they own, thus skewing the income distribution towards themselves. Individuals differ in productivity and choose how much labor to supply. High productivity individuals also own shares in the productive sector and thus earn capital income. All individuals vote over a linear tax rate on (labor and capital) income whose proceeds are redistributed lump sum. Shareholders also lobby in order to ease the price cap imposed on the private firm. We first solve analytically for the Kantian equilibrium of this lobbying game together with the majority voting equilibrium over the tax rate. We then proceed to a comparative statics analysis of the model with the help of numerical simulations. We obtain that, as the capital income distribution becomes more concentrated among the top productivity individuals, increased lobbying effort generates efficiency as well as equity costs, with lower labor supply and lower average utility levels in society.

Suggested Citation

  • De Donder, Philippe & Roemer, John E., 2016. "An allegory of the political influence of the top 1%," Business and Politics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 18(1), pages 85-96, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:buspol:v:18:y:2016:i:01:p:85-96_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S136952580000365X/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Philippe De Donder & John E. Roemer, 2017. "The dynamics of capital accumulation in the US: simulations after piketty," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 15(2), pages 121-141, June.
    2. Facundo Alvaredo & Anthony B. Atkinson & Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez, 2013. "The Top 1 Percent in International and Historical Perspective," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 27(3), pages 3-20, Summer.
    3. Michael J. P. Magill & Martine Quinzii & Jean-Charles Rochet, 2013. "A Critique of Shareholder Value Maximization," Swiss Finance Institute Research Paper Series 13-16, Swiss Finance Institute.
    4. Roemer John E, 2006. "Party Competition under Private and Public Financing: A Comparison of Institutions," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 6(1), pages 1-33, April.
    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. Bezin, Emeline & Ponthière, Gregory, 2019. "The tragedy of the commons and socialization: Theory and policy," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 98(C).
    2. Philippe De Donder & John E. Roemer, 2017. "The dynamics of capital accumulation in the US: simulations after piketty," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 15(2), pages 121-141, June.
    3. Alberto Grillo, 2020. "Ethical Voting in Heterogenous Groups," Working Papers halshs-02962464, HAL.
    4. Friederike Schuchardt, 2018. "Ökonomische Ungleichheit und Verteilungsgerechtigkeit," Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft - WuG, Kammer für Arbeiter und Angestellte für Wien, Abteilung Wirtschaftswissenschaft und Statistik, vol. 44(3), pages 405-423.
    5. Alberto Grillo, 2020. "Ethical Voting in Heterogenous Groups," AMSE Working Papers 2034, Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France, revised Apr 2021.

    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. Ghosh, sudeshna, 2017. "Education Attainment Forecasting and Economic Inequality United States," MPRA Paper 89712, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Estrada, Fernando, 2015. "Antinomies de Le Capital au XXIe siècle [Antinomies of Capital in the 21st Century]," MPRA Paper 61126, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. European Commission, 2013. "Tax reforms in EU Member States - Tax policy challenges for economic growth and fiscal sustainability – 2013 Report," Taxation Papers 38, Directorate General Taxation and Customs Union, European Commission.
    4. Bartels, Charlotte & Jäger, Simon & Obergruber, Natalie, 2020. "Long-Term Effects of Equal Sharing: Evidence from Inheritance Rules for Land," IZA Discussion Papers 13665, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Stefan Bach, 2014. ""Reichensteuer"-Diskussion: Hintergrund und Perspektiven," DIW Roundup: Politik im Fokus 16, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    6. Pirmin Fessler & Martin Schürz, 2018. "Private Wealth Across European Countries: The Role of Income, Inheritance and the Welfare State," Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(4), pages 521-549, October.
    7. Foster, John & Bell, William Paul & Wild, Phillip & Sharma, Deepak & Sandu, Suwin & Froome, Craig & Wagner, Liam & Misra, Suchi & Bagia, Ravindra, 2013. "Analysis of institutional adaptability to redress electricity infrastructure vulnerability due to climate change," MPRA Paper 47787, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Bartling, Björn & Cappelen, Alexander W & Ekström, Mathias & Sørensen, Erik Ø. & Tungodden, Bertil, 2018. "Fairness in Winner-Take-All Markets," Working Paper Series 1214, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    9. Anna & Leonardo Weller, 2018. "Was Cold War A Constraint To Income Inequality?," Anais do XLIV Encontro Nacional de Economia [Proceedings of the 44th Brazilian Economics Meeting] 94, ANPEC - Associação Nacional dos Centros de Pós-Graduação em Economia [Brazilian Association of Graduate Programs in Economics].
    10. Vincenzo Carrieri & Francesco Principe & Michele Raitano, 2018. "What makes you ‘super-rich’? New evidence from an analysis of football players’ wages," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 70(4), pages 950-973.
    11. Rolf Aaberge & Anthony B. Atkinson & Sebastian Königs, 2018. "From classes to copulas: wages, capital, and top incomes," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 16(2), pages 295-320, June.
    12. Patrizio Pagano & Massimo Sbracia, 2014. "The secular stagnation hypothesis: a review of the debate and some insights," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 231, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    13. Cha, Myung Soo, "undated". "Living Standards, Inequality, and Human Development since 1870 : a Review of Evidence," IFCS - Working Papers in Economic History.WH 28438, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Instituto Figuerola.
    14. Björn Bartling & Vanessa Valero & Roberto A. Weber, 2018. "Is Social Responsibility a Normal Good?," CESifo Working Paper Series 7263, CESifo.
    15. Hasan, Iftekhar & Horvath, Roman & Mares, Jan, 2020. "Finance and wealth inequality," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 108(C).
    16. Sudip Ranjan Basu, 2017. "Do data show divergence? Revisiting global income inequality trends," Asia-Pacific Development Journal, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), vol. 24(1), pages 23-53, June.
    17. Lars Osberg, 2014. "What’s So Bad About More Inequality?," Working Papers daleconwp2014-01, Dalhousie University, Department of Economics.
    18. An, Li & Lou, Dong & Shi, Donghui, 2022. "Wealth redistribution in bubbles and crashes," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 134-153.
    19. Grabka, Markus M., 2015. "Income and Wealth Inequality after the Financial Crisis: The Case of Germany," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 42(2), pages 371-390.
    20. Marin, Giovanni & Vona, Francesco, 2023. "Finance and the reallocation of scientific, engineering and mathematical talent," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(5).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • H31 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - Household

    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:cup:buspol:v:18:y:2016:i:01:p:85-96_00. 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: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/bap .

    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.