In the postwar era until recently, public-transfer shares of GDP have risen dramatically in every developed democracy. Much positive theory purports to explain this development as a direct consequence of differing distributions of political (votes) and economic (money) resources. This literature...

The debate on whether democracy and inequality increase the level of redistribution in a country is still ongoing. We construct a model that predicts a higher probability of redistribution in democracies than in autocracies. Further, with higher initial inequality, there should be more...

The debate on whether democracy and inequality increase the level of redistribution is ongoing. We construct a model that predicts higher probability of redistribution in democracies than autocracies through social transfers. Higher inequality leads to more redistribution in democracies but not...

The federal government's welfare reform efforts have two defining characteristics: first, welfare reform requires welfare recipients to work for their checks (and to move toward permanent, self-sustainable employment); and second welfare reform devolves administrative responsibility to the...

We assess how tax-benefit policy developments in 2001-2011 affected the household income distribution in seven EU countries. We use the standard microsimulation-based decomposition method, separating further the effect of structural policy changes and the uprating of monetary parameters, which...

Social welfare functions that assign weights to individuals based on their income levels can be used to document the relative importance of growth and inequality changes for changes in social welfare. In a large panel of industrial and developing countries over the past 40 years, most of the...