Many societies today are experiencing growing inequality in terms of wealth, income, health, education, resources or opportunities, trends that have negative effects upon well-being, trust, and motivation. We investigated whether inequalities –– particularly those perceived as fair ––...

This paper explores the relationship between a large government cash transfer programme, changes in inequality, and political participation in Mexico. The results show that increases in the coverage of the programme during the 2008 financial crisis resulted in greater individual participation in...

One cannot doubt the ubiquitous lack of hope and confidence in the so-called democratic institutions by the large majority of people. The fundamental reason thereof is the blatant contradiction between the principle of democracy, promoting the rule of law and thereby the welfare of people, and...

The measurement of Inequality of Opportunity has attracted a lot of attention in recent years, despite of the fact that it is very limited by the scarce availability of data on family background. In this paper we propose a method to overcome this limitation, which consists of using another...

We model inter-individual differences in preferences for redistribution as a function of (a) self-interest; (b) stable ideological traits; (c) subjective perceptions of the relative importance of the main determinants of income differences (luck, effort, talent). Individuals base the latter on...

We study the political economy of the environment in autocratic, weak and strong democracies when individuals can either mitigate the health consequences of domestic pollution privately or reduce pollution collectively through public policy. The setting is that of a small open economy in which...

This paper studies the distributive impact of institutional change in developing countries. In such economies, property rights systems may preserve the interests of an influential minority, who can control key-markets, access to assets and investment opportunities, especially if they enjoy...

This paper develops a normative approach to the measurement of ex-ante inequality of opportunity in a multidimensional setting - that is, when the individual outcome is represented by a multidimensional variable. We characterize three classes of social welfare functions, all endorsing ex-ante...

This paper begins by proposing two cardinal measures of inequality in life chances. Using as its database a matrix in which the lines correspond to the social category of parents and the columns to the income distribution of their children, it then highlights the importance of the marginal...

I measure the rate of aversion to inequality in consumption as expressed in the development aid given by rich countries to poor ones between 1965 and 2005. Over time, OECD countries have become less concerned about international inequity. Even for a fairly leaky bucket, the consumption rate of...