This survey documents the different arguments discussed in the academic literature on whether and how economic inequality and the emergence and stability of democratic political systems are connected. While early research in this domain has often focused on new and emerging democracies, this...

This paper presents an empirical investigation about the effect of an increase in economic inequality on some aspects of the quality of a democracy. The main novelty of the paper lies in its methodology: it applies to a single country (instead of a pool of countries) - the UK - in a long run...

We run a laboratory experiment where some participants are selected to make investment decisions on behalf of others. We test whether a democratic context influences the social preferences of decision makers in terms of efficiency, altruism and concern for inequality. We find that decision...

There is a growing literature studying the effects of economic freedom and democracy on income inequality; nevertheless, the inequality-effects of both factors are apparently studied separately. This paper revisits the income inequality-economic freedom nexus and uncovers the role of political...