THE EFFECT OF DIRECT DEMOCRACY ON INCOME REDISTRIBUTION: EVIDENCE FOR SWITZERLAND

Lars Feld, Justina A. V. Fischer and Gebhard Kirchgässner

Economic Inquiry, 2010, vol. 48, issue 4, 817-840

Abstract: In political economics, the impact of institutions on income redistribution is mainly studied by comparing different forms of representative democracy. In this article, we analyze the influence of direct democratic institutions on redistribution first focusing on welfare and nonwelfare spending using yearly panel data for Swiss cantons. Then, we estimate a model, which explains the determinants of actually achieved redistribution measured by Gini coefficients. While our results indicate that less public funds are used to redistribute income, inequality is not reduced to a lesser extent in direct than in representative democracies for a given initial income distribution. (JEL D7, D78, I30, H75, H11)

Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (42)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1465-7295.2008.00174.x

Related works:
Working Paper: The Effect of Direct Democracy on Income Redistribution:Evidence for Switzerland (2006)
Working Paper: The Effect of Direct Democracy on Income Redistribution: Evidence for Switzerland (2006)
Working Paper: The Effect of Direct Democracy on Income Redistribution: Evidence for Switzerland (2006)
Working Paper: The effect of direct democracy on income redistribution: evidence for Switzerland (2006)
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:ecinqu:v:48:y:2010:i:4:p:817-840

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://ordering.onl ... s.aspx?ref=1465-7295

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Inquiry is currently edited by Tim Salmon

More articles in Economic Inquiry from Western Economic Association International Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().