1,721,014 research outputs found
Heterogeneity in preferences for redistribution and public spending: A cross-country analysis
Full text linkThe performance of politicians: the effect of gender quotas
Full text linkThis paper investigates whether the gender of elected politicians affects political outcomes at the municipal level. Relying on Italian administrative data from 1991 to 2009, we are able to instrument the gender of elected politicians using an institutional exogenous change: a gender quota in the candidacy list enforced only in a subsample of municipalities and for a short period of time. While the gender of politicians does not affect the general ‘quality of life’, proxied by the internal migration rate, it does increase significantly both the efficacy of policies targeting women and households, proxied by the fertility rate, and the efficiency of the municipal administration, proxied by the actual size of the administrative bodies. These results, which are robust to several specifications and checks, suggest that affirmative action enhancing gender equality in political representation may be beneficial not only in terms of social justice but also from a political outcome perspective
Heterogeneous preferences and in-kind redistribution: Theory and evidence
No full textThis paper examines the impact of social heterogeneity on in-kind redistribution. We contribute to the previous literature in two ways: we consider (i) the provision of several public goods and (ii) agents different not only in income, but also in their preferences over the various goods provided by the public sector. In this setting, both the distribution and size of goods provision depend on the heterogeneity of preferences. Our main result is that preference heterogeneity tends to decrease in-kind redistribution, while income inequality tends to increase it. An empirical investigation based on United States Census Bureau data confirms these theoretical findings
Empirics of the median voter : democracy, redistribution and the role of the middle class
No full textThe present paper improves the empirical investigation on the effectiveness of the median voter theorem. Using high quality data, it is possible to directly observe net cash transfers for every individual and to investigate the effects of taxes and transfers on different classes. Results suggest to reject - or at least question - the hypothesis that the middle class plays a special role in the policy determination. Not only its gains from redistribution are negligible, but the link between income and redistribution is lower than for any other class of income. Moreover, the strength of the median voter seems to reduce over time. Finally, more asymmetric societies decrease the amount of redistribution targeted to the middle class, a result in strong contrast to the median voter theorem, since - according to it - the middle class should have incentives to expropriate richest individual
Fear of the dark: how terrorist events affect trust in the long run
No full textThis paper examines the long-term effects of terrorism on general-ized trust at the global level. Using data from the Global TerrorismDatabase and the World Values Survey, we analyze a sample of approx-imately 210,000 individuals born between 1954 and 1993 and surveyedin 107 different countries from 1990 to 2020. We base our research onthe well-grounded psychological theories on the formation of humanbeliefs, attitudes or values, and we find robust evidence that exposureto terrorist events in the two essential stages of human development –adolescence and early adulthood – reduces trust in other people. Theformed values are persistent throughout life. These results are robustto several alternative specification
Inequality, Privatization and Democratic Institutions in Developing Countries
No full textAccording to the existing theoretical literature there are several channels through
which privatization of State-owned enterprises and assets may shape the distribution
of income either increasing or decreasing the level of inequality. As a consequence,
assessing the actual distributional impact of privatization becomes an empirical mat-
ter. This paper is a rst attempt to empirically investigate the relationship between
privatization and income inequality focusing on the role of democratic institutions
in developing countries. Using an unbalanced panel of 80 countries in the period
1988-2008, we nd that privatization is negatively and signicantly correlated with
inequality when democratic institutions are well consolidated, and positively when
they are not. Our results, robust to dierent specications, measures of democ-
racy and economic controls, suggest an interesting and not yet investigated policy
implication for low or middle-income countries: only after having established ma-
ture representative political institutions, privatization appears to be related to a
reduction in income inequality
Fear of the dark: How terrorist events affect trust in the long run
No full textIn this paper, we provide new evidence on whether individuals differ in their level of trust depending on their exposure to unexpected terrorist attacks during crucial life phases. In line with the well-grounded psychological theories on the formation of human beliefs, attitudes, and values, we find that exposure to traumatic and violent events in the two essential stages of human development "adolescence and early adulthood" reduces trust in other people. The formed values tend to be persistent over time, and the results are robust to several checks
Fear of the dark: How terrorist events affect trust in the long run
No full textoai:iris.unipv.it:11571/152425
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