Coalition governments and distributive programs: a simple model

Sugato Dasgupta

The Journal of International Trade & Economic Development, 2008, vol. 17, issue 1, 69-84

Abstract: Casual empiricism reveals that a government's program implementation policy frequently fails to maximize the representative citizen's welfare. Inthis paper, I construct a model that incorporates political economy considerations and examine the equilibrium policy distortions that a coalition government begets. I show that coalition governments are fiscally profligate when program benefits are divisible and excessively conservative when these benefits are indivisible. In other words, program characteristics (divisible or indivisible) affect even the qualitative nature of coalition-related policy distortions.

Keywords: distributive program; coalition government; inefficiency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
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DOI: 10.1080/09638190701727869

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