IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/qjecon/v109y1994i2p465-490..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Distributive Politics and Economic Growth

Author

Listed:
  • Alberto Alesina
  • Dani Rodrik

Abstract

We study the relationship between politics and economic growth in a simple model of endogenous growth with distributive conflict among agents endowed with varying capital/labor shares. We establish several results regarding the factor ownership of the median individual and the level of taxation, redistribution, and growth. Policies that maximize growth are optimal only for a government that cares solely about pure "capitalists." The greater the inequality of wealth and income, the higher the rate of taxation, and the lower growth. We present empirical results that show that inequality in land and income ownership is negatively correlated with subsequent economic growth.

Suggested Citation

  • Alberto Alesina & Dani Rodrik, 1994. "Distributive Politics and Economic Growth," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 109(2), pages 465-490.
  • Handle: RePEc:oup:qjecon:v:109:y:1994:i:2:p:465-490.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.2307/2118470
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 1991. "Is Inequality Harmful for Growth? Theory and Evidence," CEPR Discussion Papers 581, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. Barro, Robert J, 1990. "Government Spending in a Simple Model of Endogenous Growth," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(5), pages 103-126, October.
    3. Robert J. Barro, 1991. "Economic Growth in a Cross Section of Countries," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 106(2), pages 407-443.
    4. Romer, Thomas, 1975. "Individual welfare, majority voting, and the properties of a linear income tax," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 4(2), pages 163-185, February.
    5. Mohtadi, Hamid & Roe, Terry L., 1991. "Political Economy of Endogenous Growth (Revised)," Bulletins 7502, University of Minnesota, Economic Development Center.
    6. Tabellini, Guido & Alesina, Alberto, 1990. "Voting on the Budget Deficit," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(1), pages 37-49, March.
    7. Mayer, Wolfgang, 1984. "Endogenous Tariff Formation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(5), pages 970-985, December.
    8. Oded Galor & Joseph Zeira, 1993. "Income Distribution and Macroeconomics," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 60(1), pages 35-52.
    9. Robert J. Barro & Xavier Sala-I-Martin, 1992. "Public Finance in Models of Economic Growth," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 59(4), pages 645-661.
    10. Berg, Andrew & Sachs, Jeffrey, 1988. "The debt crisis structural explanations of country performance," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(3), pages 271-306, November.
    11. Roberts, Kevin W. S., 1977. "Voting over income tax schedules," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 329-340, December.
    12. Meltzer, Allan H & Richard, Scott F, 1981. "A Rational Theory of the Size of Government," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 89(5), pages 914-927, October.
    13. Terrones, M., 1990. "Influence Activities and Economic Growth," University of Western Ontario, Departmental Research Report Series 9006, University of Western Ontario, Department of Economics.
    14. Fischer, Stanley, 1980. "Dynamic inconsistency, cooperation and the benevolent dissembling government," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 2(1), pages 93-107, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. repec:oup:qjecon:v:109:y:1994:i:2:p:465-90 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. repec:tpr:qjecon:v:109:y:1994:i:2:p:465-90 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Alesina, Alberto & Perotti, Roberto, 1996. "Income distribution, political instability, and investment," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(6), pages 1203-1228, June.
    4. Alberto Ades, 1995. "Economic Development With Endogenous Political Participation," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 7(2), pages 93-117, July.
    5. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 1991. "Is Inequality Harmful for Growth? Theory and Evidence," CEPR Discussion Papers 581, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    6. Alesina, Alberto & Perotti, Roberto, 1994. "The Political Economy of Growth: A Critical Survey of the Recent Literature," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank Group, vol. 8(3), pages 351-371, September.
    7. Holger Strulik, 2007. "A distributional theory of government growth," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 132(3), pages 305-318, September.
    8. Alex Cukierman & Yossi Spiegel, 2003. "When is the median voter paradigm a reasonable guide for policy choices in a representative democracy?," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(3), pages 247-284, November.
    9. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 1999. "Political economics and macroeconomic policy," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 22, pages 1397-1482, Elsevier.
    10. Andreas Schäfer & Thomas Steger, 2007. "Macroeconomic Consequences of Distributional Conflicts," CESifo Working Paper Series 2007, CESifo.
    11. Roberto Perotti, 1993. "Political Equilibrium, Income Distribution, and Growth," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 60(4), pages 755-776.
    12. Schäfer, Andreas & Steger, Thomas, 2013. "Distributional conflict in small open economies," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(4), pages 355-367.
    13. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 2002. "Political economics and public finance," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 24, pages 1549-1659, Elsevier.
    14. Creedy, John & Moslehi, Solmaz, 2009. "Modelling the composition of government expenditure in democracies," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 42-55, March.
    15. Ryo Arawatari & Tetsuo Ono, 2015. "Redistributive Politics And Government Debt In A Borrowing-Constrained Economy," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 67(1), pages 83-103, January.
    16. Joydeb Sasmal & Ritwik Sasmal, 2020. "Public Debt, Economic Growth and Fiscal Balance: Alternative Measures of Sustainability in the Indian Context," Global Business Review, International Management Institute, vol. 21(3), pages 780-799, June.
    17. Ryo Arawatari & Tetsuo Ono, 2017. "Inequality and public debt: A positive analysis," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(5), pages 1155-1173, November.
    18. Stanley L. Winer & Walter Hettich, 2002. "The Political Economy of Taxation: Positive and Normative Analysis when Collective Choice Matters," Carleton Economic Papers 02-11, Carleton University, Department of Economics, revised 2004.
    19. Celal Kucuker, 2003. "Türkiye Ýktisat Kongresi Büyüme Stratejileri Çalýþma Grubu," Working Papers 2003/5, Turkish Economic Association.
    20. Robi Ragan, 2013. "Institutional sources of policy bias: A computational investigation," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 25(4), pages 467-491, October.
    21. Sugata Marjit & Ritwik Sasmal & Joydeb Sasmal, 2020. "Composition of public expenditure and growth of per capita income in Indian states: a political perspective," Journal of Social and Economic Development, Springer;Institute for Social and Economic Change, vol. 22(1), pages 1-17, June.
    22. Archishman Chakraborty & Alessandro Citanna, 2002. "Occupational choice, incentives and wealth redistributions with scarcity of capital," Working Papers hal-00593379, HAL.

    More about this item

    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:oup:qjecon:v:109:y:1994:i:2:p:465-490.. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/qje .

    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.