One of the most widely used method of targeting is to reduce welfare benefits as income rises. Although the need for such targeting is clear enough, it also entails two important difficulties. Firstly, the prospect for the recipients of losing part of their benefits if they were to earn more can...

This paper studies the issue of political support for environmental taxes. The environmental tax is determined by majority voting, given a refund rule that specifies the allocation of tax proceeds. The refund rule is chosen by a welfare-maximizing constitutional planner. We show that: (i) The...

We develop a model where voters differ in their exogenous income and in their ideological views, with racism as an illustration. Electoral competition takes place between an endogenous number of parties which propose platforms consisting of both an ideological and an economic dimension. Our...

This paper studies the design of a nonlinear social security scheme in a society where individuals differ in two respects: productivity and degree of myopia. Myopic individuals may not save “enough” for their retirement because their “myopic self” emerges when labor supply and savings...

We consider a two-period model. In the first period, individuals consume two goods: one is sinful and the other is not. The sin good brings pleasure but has a detrimental effect on second period health and individuals tend to underestimate this effect. In the second period, individuals can...

This paper studies the design of nonlinear social security schemes when individuals differ in productivity and in their degree of myopia. Myopic individuals may not save ‘‘enough’’ for their retirement. The welfare function is paternalistic: The rate of time preference of the farsighted...

This paper analyses the political support for social insurance that includes elements of redistribution when there exists an imperfect private insurance alternative. Individuals differ both in their income and risk. The social insurance is compulsory and charges an income-related contribution...

This paper studies majority voting over non-linear income taxes when individuals respond to taxation by substituting untaxable leisure to taxable labor (incentive effects). We first show that voting cycle over progressive and regressive taxes is inevitable. This is because the middle-class can...

We build a model of secession crises where voters may wish to accommodate the minority to prevent secession. We show the existence of a majority voting equilibrium with a government’s type biased in favor of the minority. We propose a measure of secession risk and perform the comparative...

We build a simple model of secession crises where a majority of voters may wish to accommodate the minority in order to prevent a secession attempt. We first show the existence of a majority voting equilibrium, where the median voter is decisive and most prefers a government’s type that is...