IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/soz/wpaper/0810.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Why does the amount of income redistribution differ between United States and Europe? The Janus face of Switzerland

Author

Listed:
  • Sule Akkoyunlu

    (Socioeconomic Institute, University of Zurich)

  • Ilja Neustadt

    (Socioeconomic Institute, University of Zurich)

  • Peter Zweifel

    (Socioeconomic Institute, University of Zurich)

Abstract

In this paper, the amount of income redistribution in the United States, the European Union, and Switzerland is compared and empirically related to economic, political, and behavioral determinants elaborated in the literature. Lying in between the two poles, Switzerland provides unique evidence about the relative merits of competing hypotheses. It tips the balance against the economic explanation, which predicts more rather than less income redistribution in the United States compared to the EU. It only weakly supports the political model linking proportional representation and multiparty structure (which also characterize Switzerland) to redistribution; yet the Swiss share of transfers in the GDP is low. Behavioral explanations receive a good deal of support from the case of Switzerland, a country that shares with the United States the belief that hard work rather than luck, birth, connections, and corruption determine wealth. In this way, the Janus face of Switzerland may help to explain the difference in the amount of U.S. and EU income redistribution.

Suggested Citation

  • Sule Akkoyunlu & Ilja Neustadt & Peter Zweifel, 2008. "Why does the amount of income redistribution differ between United States and Europe? The Janus face of Switzerland," SOI - Working Papers 0810, Socioeconomic Institute - University of Zurich.
  • Handle: RePEc:soz:wpaper:0810
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econ.uzh.ch/apps/workingpapers/wp/wp0810.pdf
    File Function: revised version, 2009
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Polk, Andreas & Schmutzler, Armin & Müller, Adrian, 2014. "Lobbying and the power of multinational firms," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 209-227.
    2. Neustadt, Ilja & Zweifel, Peter, 2010. "Is the Welfare State Sustainable? Experimental Evidence on Citizens' Preferences for Redistribution," MPRA Paper 22233, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Michele Sennhauser, 2009. "Why the Linear Utility Function is a Risky Choice in Discrete-Choice Experiments," SOI - Working Papers 1014, Socioeconomic Institute - University of Zurich.
    4. Wen‐Chun Chang, 2010. "Religion and Preferences for Redistributive Policies in an East Asian Country," Poverty & Public Policy, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 2(4), pages 81-109, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Redistribution; Income Mobility; Openness; Political Economy; Beliefs; Religion; Immigration;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • D64 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Altruism; Philanthropy; Intergenerational Transfers
    • H53 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Welfare Programs
    • I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General Welfare, Well-Being

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:soz:wpaper:0810. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Severin Oswald (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/seizhch.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.