Does Distributional Skewness Lead to Redistribution? Evidence from the United States

F. C. Rodrigìuez
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Francisco Rodríguez

Economics and Politics, 1999, vol. 11, issue 2, 171-199

Abstract: This paper presents time‐series, cross‐section, and historical evidence from the United States to test whether distributional skewness leads to the adoption of redistributive policies. On all accounts the theory performs poorly: we fail to find evidence either of a long‐run stable relationship or of short‐run causation between distributional skewness and redistribution in the time‐series data; the cross‐section data uncover no correlation between skewness and welfare spending or support of the Democratic Party; and analysis of the historical evidence shows that key changes in redistributive institutions in the United States were not preceded by increases in distributional skewness.

Date: 1999
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (34)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0343.00057

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:ecopol:v:11:y:1999:i:2:p:171-199

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0954-1985

Access Statistics for this article

Economics and Politics is currently edited by Peter Rosendorff

More articles in Economics and Politics from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().