In modern politics, the left-right divide has served as a political schema classifying ideologies that has allowed parties to communicate with voters and the latter to orient themselves in a complex political world. Although the left-right scale has been the most extensive instrument used to...

This paper argues that budget deficits can be used strategically by the government to improve its chance of reelection. Under progressive wealth taxation, Ricardian equivalence fails if individuals have different levels of wealth because a budget deficit redistributes resources from individuals...

The paper examines the impact of income inequality and mobility on income redistribution in a modified median voter model where redistributive conflict takes place both between educational groups and age-groups. The effects of inequality and mobility are not unambiguous but depend on factors...

The relationship between the degree of inequality and the demand for redistribution has been a central question in political science and political economy. The famous median-voter model predicts that higher inequality, reflected in a growing gap between the income of the average and the median...

This paper reports results from a laboratory experiment that investigates the Meltzer-Richard model of equilibrium tax rates, inequality, and income redistribution. We also extend that model to incorporate social preferences in the form of altruism and inequality aversion. The experiment varies...

Social choice models usually assume that choice is among exogenously given and non decomposable alternatives. Often, on the contrary, choice is among objects that are constructed by individuals or institutions as complex bundles made of many interdependent components. In this paper we present a...