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Do the rich vote Conservative because they are rich?

Jo Lind

No 02/2006, Memorandum from Oslo University, Department of Economics

Abstract: Political economy models predict that the rich oppose redistribution, and hence vote for conservative parties. Although this seems to fit the data well, I show that this is not true when we control for unobservable characteristics. Using Norwegian survey data, I study to what extent voting is caused by income. Unobserved characteristics correlated with income are handled by using fixed effects panel data discrete choice models. Although a positive association between income and conservative voting persists when controlling for unobservables, the magnitude of the effect is reduced by a factor of five. To correct for measurement error, I instrument income with average income by profession. The magnitude of the coefficients is increased, but the main conclusions remain.

Keywords: Political economy; redistribution; voting; multinomial logit; panel data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C23 C25 D31 D72 H11 H53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 46 pages
Date: 2006-02-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-dcm, nep-pbe and nep-pol
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Journal Article: Do the Rich Vote Conservative Because They Are Rich? (2010) Downloads
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