This paper tackles the issues of social polarization and income polarization in several North American, European and Australian countries in the perspective of redistribution patterns. Presenting a simple theoretical framework, we argue that comparing both types of polarization can help predict the level of redistribution in those countries. We thus propose an accuracy test that consists in predicting a redistribution ordering between countries and compare it with the observed one. Only countries where social polarization ranking and income polarization ranking differ are considered. As a result, we find that our prediction is accurate for about 70% of these pairs of countries.
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Paper provided by Departement d'Economique de la Faculte d'administration à l'Universite de Sherbrooke in its series Cahiers de recherche with number
08-02.
Find related papers by JEL classification: D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
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References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Benabou, R., 1996.
"Inequality and Growth,"
Working Papers
96-22, C.V. Starr Center for Applied Economics, New York University.
[Downloadable!]
Roland Bénabou, 1996.
"Inequality and Growth,"
NBER Chapters,
in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1996, Volume 11, pages 11-92
National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!]
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