Spend It Like Beckham?Inequality and Redistribution in the UK, 1983-2004

Andreas Georgiadis and Alan Manning ()

CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE

Abstract: A main activity of the state is to redistribute resources. Models of the political processgenerally predict that a rise in inequality will lead to more redistribution. This paper showsthat, for the UK in the period 1983-2004, a plausibly exogenous rise in income inequality hasnot been associated with increased redistribution. We then explore this further usingattitudinal data. We show that the demand for redistribution, having shown considerablevariation over time, is at an all-time low. We argue that the decline in the demand forredistribution can mostly be accounted for by an increasing belief in the importance ofincentives though changes in preferences over the distribution of income have been importantin some sub-periods.

Keywords: Taxation; Inequality; Redistribution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H20 D72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ltv
Date: 2007-08
View list of references

Downloads: (external link)
http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp0816.pdf (application/pdf)

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: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp0816

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE
Series data maintained by ().