Political Activism and Redistribution

Jamele Rigolini, a Ph.D. Candidate in Economics at New York University, presented a paper, Political Activism and Redistribution, analyzing the complex dynamics relating poverty, inequality, redistribution, and political activity.

ABSTRACT:

I investigate the relationship between poverty, inequality and redistribution under the assumption that redistribution depends both on the individual intensity of political activity and on the enforcement of property rights. Because poverty hinders political activity while inequality encourages it, redistribution peaks at intermediate levels of inequality. Nonetheless, when I endogenize the degree of state resistance to redistributive pressures the previous relationship remains in general ambiguous except for a small set of "autocratic" regimes. Finally, I study the empirical association between inequality and redistribution for different political regimes, which appears to confirm the theoretical predictions.