Do the Rich Vote Conservative Because They Are Rich?

Jo Lind

Review of Economics and Institutions, 2010, vol. 1, issue 2

Abstract: Political economics predicts that the rich oppose redistribution and vote for conservative parties. Although this seemingly fits the data well in most countries, I show that the relationship breaks down when we control for unobservable characteristics. Using Norwegian survey data, I study to what extent voting is caused by income. 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 becomes higher, but the main conclusion remains.

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)
Date: 2010
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Do the rich vote Conservative because they are rich? (2006)
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