The DOI matches its Crossref record; 1 of the 1 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Unequal Societies: Income Distribution and the Social Contract
Abstract
This paper develops a theory of inequality and the social contract aiming to explain how countries with similar economic and political “fundamentals” can sustain such different systems of social insurance, fiscal redistribution, and education finance as those of the United States and Western Europe. With imperfect credit and insurance markets some redistributive policies can improve ex ante welfare, and this implies that their political support tends to decrease with inequality. Conversely, with credit constraints, lower redistribution translates into more persistent inequality; hence the potential for multiple steady states, with mutually reinforcing high inequality and low redistribution, or vice versa. (JEL D31, E62, P16, O41, I22)
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Citations
Cites
A Rational Theory of the Size of Government
Meltzer, A. H., & Richard, S. F. (1981) · Journal of Political Economy · doi:10.1086/261013 · Cited by 5,485
Cited by
O’Neill, B. C., Kriegler, E., Ebi, K. L., Kemp-Benedict, E., Riahi, K., Rothman, D. S., van Ruijven, B. J., van Vuuren, D. P., Birkmann, J., Kok, K., et al. (2017) · Global Environmental Change · doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2015.01.004 · Cited by 3,359
The Technology of Skill Formation
Cunha, F., & Heckman, J. (2007) · American Economic Review · doi:10.1257/aer.97.2.31 · Cited by 3,050
Fighting Poverty in the US and Europe: A World of Difference
Alesina, A., & Glaeser, E. (2004) · doi:10.1093/0199267669.001.0001 · Cited by 1,509
Redistribution, Inequality, and Growth
Ostry, J., Berg, A., Tsangarides, C., JOstry@imf.org, ABerg@imf.org, & CTsangarides@imf.org (2014) · Staff Discussion Notes · doi:10.5089/9781484352076.006 · Cited by 1,374
From Physical to Human Capital Accumulation: Inequality and the Process of Development
Galor, O., & Moav, O. (2004) · Review of Economic Studies · doi:10.1111/0034-6527.00312 · Cited by 1,317
Metadata
- Authors
- Bénabou, R.
- Venue
- American Economic Review
- Publisher
- American Economic Association
- Published
- 2000-03-01
- Volume
- 90
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 96-129
- ISSN
- 0002-8282 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2048838151
- Cited by
- 1,104
- References
- 1
- FWCI
- 104.83
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- Bénabou, R. (2000). Unequal Societies: Income Distribution and the Social Contract. American Economic Review. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.90.1.96
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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
