Ideology or voters? A quasi-experimental test of why left-wing governments spend more

Maux, Benoît Le; Dostálová, Kristýna; Padovano, Fabio

doi:10.1007/s11127-019-00666-8

Cited by 7 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 46 publications

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“…Following this line of inquiry, we also find that a majoritarian voting system is associated with less redistribution, while the partisan orientation of the executive does not matter. These findings confirm the intuition of Becher (2016), whereby political institutions, more than the ideology of parties, matter in shaping redistributive policies (Le Maux et al 2020). From a theoretical standpoint, under proportional representation, parties that represent different groups of citizens need to form coalitions in order to be able to implement policies; this will typically result in higher taxes and in a larger public sector (e.g., Iversen and Soskice, 2006;Alesina and Glaeser, 2004;Persson andTabellini, 2003, Austen-Smith, 2000).…”

Section: Augmented Model (I): Supply Side Indicatorssupporting

confidence: 59%

Comparing governments’ efficiency at supplying income redistribution

2020

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We examine whether and to what extent political institutions explain different performances in income redistribution across countries. After reviewing the available data sources, the measures of income redistribution and the traditional demand side explanations of redistribution, we focus our analysis on supply side factors, like political and economic institutions, rent seeking processes and the resources and instruments available for redistribution. We provide robust empirical evidence on the association between these different factors and the observed degree of redistribution. Our analysis supports the view that -for a given demand of redistribution -political and economic institutions contribute to explain differences across countries in the observed degree of redistribution.

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