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Do Politicians Serve the One Percent? Evidence in OECD Countries

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Abstract

Present social movements, as "Occupy Wall Street" or the Spanish "Indignados", claim that politicians work for an economic elite, the 1%, that drives the world economic policies. In this paper we show through econometric analysis that these movements are accurate: politicians in OECD countries maximize the happiness of the economic elite. In 2009 center-right parties maximized the happiness of the 100th-98th richest percentile and center-left parties the 100th-95th richest percentile. The situation has evolved from the seventies when politicians represented, approximately, the median voter.

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  • Torija, P., 2013. "Do Politicians Serve the One Percent? Evidence in OECD Countries," CITYPERC Working Paper Series 2013-04, Department of International Politics, City University London.
    • Handle: RePEc:dip:dpaper:2013-04
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    File URL: https://openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/2114/1/CITYPERC-WPS-2013_04.pdf
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    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. Who cares about the median voter? Not the politicians, maybe
      by Economic Logician in Economic Logic on 2013-04-05 20:26:00
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