The paper investigates the effectiveness of the median voter as a decisive agent in the process of redistribution. According to the previous literature, it tests several assumptions finding interesting results: The positive relation between inequality and redistribution is confirmed, but the...

The amount of taxes and public expenditures seems to be uncorrelated to the level of market inequality in OECD countries. This empirical evidence is diffcult to be rationalized in a standard median voter theorem setting, where individuals rationally choose their preferred redistribution scheme....

An indivisible good is an ideal type with interesting properties and strong implications about public policy. It is a good - such as a heart transplant or a treatment for AIDS - that must be consumed in a fixed amount or not at all. The community's demand curve for an indivisible good is a...

We consider an overlapping generations model with heterogeneous agents where a person's probability of survival into old age is determined by a variable elasticity of substitution health production function with public and private expenditures as inputs. Analytical and numerical results reveal...

We investigate the relationship between inequality and political support for public education funding in a model of endogenous fertility and school choice. Household income heterogeneity is consistent with the skewness of empirical income distributions. Inequality can drive education spending in...

Empirical evidence on the causes and effects of inequality suggests the existence of a vicious circle of mutually reinforcing inequality and corruption. Despite the broad empirical evidence, there are only a few formal theoretical models on these dynamics. Relying on a game-theoretic approach,...

This paper investigates how the heterogenous incomes and preferences of potential donors affect the timing of contribution decisions when it is endogenously determined by contributors themselves. More specifically, we use a simple setting with two donors, Cobb-Douglas preferences, and complete...

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...

Why do politicians redistribute resources through in-kind rather than cash transfers? This paper examines political incentives for in-kind government redistribution. By analyzing the political game between office-motivated politicians and self-interested citizens, I first show that in economies...

The model describes a two person economy, in which one individual with positive exogenous income is altruist towards an individual with no income. The rich individual cares for her own social status. She evaluates her status by comparing disposable net cash incomes. When deciding on the size and...