In recent years, voter turnout has been decreasing in most industrial countries, and about 40% of all electors abstain from voting. This may affect income inequality and the GDP growth rate through a redistribution policy determined by majority voting. In this paper, we explore the reasons for this continuing decrease in voter turnout and assess its social costs. We conclude that informatization lowers voter turnout by generating an information overload, and that a decrease in voter turnout lowers GDP growth by limiting income redistribution.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
file. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Osaka University, Graduate School of Economics and Osaka School of International Public Policy (OSIPP) in its series Discussion Papers in Economics and Business with number
07-28.
Find related papers by JEL classification: D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution O15 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration P16 - Economic Systems - - Capitalist Systems - - - Political Economy of Capitalism
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
Did you know? Citation analysis on IDEAS includes online papers that are freely accessible and whose text could be automatically analyzed, currently about 150000 papers.