IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/26654.html

Political Activism and the Provision of Dynamic Incentives

Author

Listed:
  • Antoine Camous
  • Russell Cooper

Abstract

This paper studies the determination of income taxes in a dynamic setting with human capital accumulation. The goal is to understand the factors that support an outcome without complete redistribution, given a majority of relatively poor agents. In the analysis, the internal dynamics of income are not sufficient to prevent complete redistribution under majority rule without commitment. However, a political influence game limits the support for expropriatory taxation and preserves incentives. In some cases, the outcome of the game corresponds with the optimal allocation under commitment.

Suggested Citation

  • Antoine Camous & Russell Cooper, 2020. "Political Activism and the Provision of Dynamic Incentives," NBER Working Papers 26654, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:26654
    Note: EFG
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w26654.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Roland Benabou, 2000. "Unequal Societies: Income Distribution and the Social Contract," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(1), pages 96-129, March.
    2. Jonathan Heathcote & Kjetil Storesletten & Giovanni L. Violante, 2017. "Optimal Tax Progressivity: An Analytical Framework," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 132(4), pages 1693-1754.
    3. Roland Benabou & Efe A. Ok, 2001. "Social Mobility and the Demand for Redistribution: The Poum Hypothesis," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(2), pages 447-487.
    4. Gary S. Becker, 1983. "A Theory of Competition Among Pressure Groups for Political Influence," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 98(3), pages 371-400.
    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. Harms, Philipp & Zink, Stefan, 2003. "Limits to redistribution in a democracy: a survey," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 19(4), pages 651-668, November.
    2. Rafael Di Tella & Robert MacCulloch, 2009. "Why Doesn't Capitalism Flow to Poor Countries?," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 40(1 (Spring), pages 285-332.
    3. Musab Kurnaz & Mehmet Soytas, 2019. "Early Childhood Investment and Income Taxation," 2019 Meeting Papers 290, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    4. Ryo Arawatari & Tetsuo Ono, 2008. "The Political Economy of Occupational Mobility and Redistribution Policy," Discussion Papers in Economics and Business 08-18, Osaka University, Graduate School of Economics.
    5. Muren, Astri & Nyberg, Sten, 2005. "Young Liberals and Old Conservatives - Inequality, Mobility and Redistribution," Research Papers in Economics 2005:9, Stockholm University, Department of Economics.
    6. Roland Bénabou & Jean Tirole, 2006. "Belief in a Just World and Redistributive Politics," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 121(2), pages 699-746.
    7. Konrad, Kai A. & Morath, Florian, 2010. "Social mobility and redistributive taxation," CEPR Discussion Papers 7997, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    8. Daniel T. Haile, 2005. "Wealth Distribution, Lobbying and Economic Growth: Theory and Evidence," WIDER Working Paper Series RP2005-21, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    9. Jo Thori Lind, 2005. "Why is there so little redistribution?," Nordic Journal of Political Economy, Nordic Journal of Political Economy, vol. 31, pages 111-125.
    10. repec:spo:wpecon:info:hdl:2441/eu4vqp9ompqllr09iak4384sp is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Neher, Frank, 2012. "Preferences for redistribution around the world," Discussion Papers 2012/2, Free University Berlin, School of Business & Economics.
    12. Nicole Rae Baerg & Julie L. Hotchkiss & Myriam Quispe†Agnoli, 2018. "Documenting the unauthorized: Political responses to unauthorized immigration," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(1), pages 1-26, March.
    13. Anindya S. Chakrabarti & Abinash Mishra & Mohsen Mohaghegh, 2024. "Inequality and income mobility: the case of targeted and universal interventions in India," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 22(3), pages 781-807, September.
    14. Christl, Michael & De Poli, Silvia & Köppl-Turyna, Monika, 2025. "Does redistribution hurt growth? An empirical assessment of the redistribution–growth relationship in the European Union," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).
    15. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/eu4vqp9ompqllr09iak4384sp is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Xincheng Qiu & Nicolo Russo, 2025. "Income Taxation Across Countries," LIS Working papers 906, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    17. Gilles Le Garrec, 2011. "Redistribution and the cultural transmission of the taste for fairness," Working Papers hal-01069524, HAL.
    18. James B. Davies & Jie Zhang & Jinli Zeng, 2005. "Intergenerational Mobility under Private vs. Public Education," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 107(3), pages 399-417, September.
    19. Andreas Georgiadis & Alan Manning, 2012. "Spend it like Beckham? Inequality and redistribution in the UK, 1983–2004," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 151(3), pages 537-563, June.
    20. Daniel Carroll & Sewon Hur, 2023. "On The Distributional Effects Of International Tariffs," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 64(4), pages 1311-1346, November.
    21. Kurnaz, Musab & Soytas, Mehmet A., 2025. "Intergenerational income mobility and income taxation," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 176(C).
    22. D'Orlando, Fabio & Ferrante, Francesco, 2009. "The demand for job protection: Some clues from behavioural economics," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 104-114, January.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D74 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances; Revolutions
    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory
    • H31 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - Household

    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:nbr:nberwo:26654. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.