This chapter reviews the theory of the voluntary public and private redistribution of wealth elaborated by economic analysis in the last forty years or so. The central object of the theory is altruistic gift-giving, construed as benevolent voluntary redistribution of income or wealth. The theory...

Seen in historical perspective the main economic predicaments of the present world (such as poverty, inequality, backwardness) appear in a somewhat different light than in many current discussions, especially by sociologists, radical economists and political scientists. In the present paper the...

Inequality and democracy are far more compatible empirically than predicted by social conflict theory. This paper speaks to this puzzle, identifying the scope conditions under which democratization induces greater redistribution. Because autocrats sometimes have incentives to expropriate...

The term, ‘middle class’, is constantly used to describe some average group of individuals, households or families. Various definitions and measures are used within the public policy, media and academic arenas. And, yet, there is no definitive consensus as to what middle class means or how...

This paper investigates the relationship between income inequality and political party alternation at the US state level using panel data from 1971 to 2015. We hypothesize that income inequality leads to more regime instability in the form of alternation of governors’ parties. We also test the...

This article describes a model that shows the economic effects of political structure. Four structures are examined: dictatorship, individual enterprise, individual enterprise with tax redistribution, and anarchism. The dependent variables are total output and its distribution

There is data evidence that welfare has improved post democracy in Nigeria. However, the distribution or concentration of the benefits in subgroups of the population is unknown. In this paper, the question of differential welfare impacts, across and within gender, post democracy in Nigeria is...

This short essay examines the proposition that the transition process to a capitalist economic system in Eastern and Central European nations has introduced greater income inequality than in long-time capitalist nations at similar stages of development. In the empirical analysis I use comparable...

The explosion of the pandemic has been optimistically considered as the ''last straw that breaks the camel's back''. At the time of writing, after three months since its out- burst, we can hardly find any sign of a ''broken camel'': indeed, it could have been the opportunity to collectively...

This short article contributes to the Elgar Encyclopedia of Public Choice by summarizing the literature on the measurement of democracy. I proceed in two step. In the first part, I describe the classical approach for producing a measure of democracy and sketch an alternative approach. The second...