We study dynamic committee bargaining over an infinite horizon with discounting. In each period a committee proposal is generated by a random recognition rule, the committee chooses between the proposal and a status quo by majority rule, and the voting outcome in period t becomes the status quo...

Why do tax rates vary so much across countries? We study the role of altruism and ethnic fragmentation in redistribution. The government of a two-party democracy is elected by altruistic voters and decides on a redistributive income tax. Social identification directs voters' altruism toward...

The authors set up a political economy equilibrium framework for personal income distribution. Located in status theory, their concept is able to explain what justifies a certain or optimal degree of inequality in the society. The authors present an empirical analysis of personal income...

We use a novel approach to address the question of whether a union of sovereign countries can efficiently raise and allocate a budget, even when members are purely self-interested and participation is voluntary. The main innovation of our model is to explore the link between budget contributions...

We study fiscal spending by supranational unions, where participation is voluntary and countries bargain over contributions to and the allocation of a central budget. We establish and explore the link between the budget's allocation and nations' contributions that occurs since bargaining power...

We examine experimentally individual preferences for redistributions in the US, Italy, and Norway. Twenty-one subjects were assigned initial earnings from a discrete uniform distribution. The source of earnings was manipulated and depended either on luck or on individual relative performance in...

In this note, we argue that the Eurozone needs an institutional exit mechanism to enhance Eurozone stability, and propose modifications to the Dobbs' NEWNEY mechanism, the only mechanism that satisfies the twin properties of eliminating incentives for intra-Eurozone capital flight and...

We use a novel approach to address the question of whether a union of sovereign countries can efficiently raise and allocate a budget, even when members are purely self-interested and participation is voluntary. The main innovation of our model is to explore the link between budget contributions...

It is not straightforward to define the ethics of responsibility in cases where the consequences of changes in factors within our control are partly determined by factors beyond our control. In this paper, we suggest that one plausible view is to keep us responsible for the parts of the...

As a proxy for a Pareto-efficient market economy, we adopt the two-party Nash Bargaining model featuring a qualitative bias in the treatment of the contributions of the parties. The Piketty inequality here is the share in total welfare accruing to the richer party over total welfare attained at...