regime changes are often followed by redistribution to the poor at the expense of the former elite. We argue that the reason … why the elite may have to resort to full-scale democratization, despite its apparent costs to themselves, may be that …Regimes controlled by a rich elite often collapse and make way for democracy amidst widespread social unrest. Such …

redistribution from the rich to the poor will improve social welfare, regardless of how small inequality is in the status quo …

The purpose of this paper is twofold. We first develop a contractarian theory of redistribution. The existence of rules … of redistribution is explained without any recourse to the risk-aversion of individuals. Hence, we depart from the … standard legitimization of redistribution as fundamental insurance and interpret it as stemming from a principle of reciprocity …

attention, however. In this paper, we present a simple theory of the emergence and persistence of inefficient states. The …. This enables them to reduce the amount of redistribution and public good provision in democracy. Moreover, the inefficient …