Should Egalitarians Expropriate Philanthropists?

Indraneel Dasgupta () and Ravi Kanbur

CEDI Discussion Paper Series from Centre for Economic Development and Institutions(CEDI), Brunel University

Abstract: Wealthy individuals often voluntarily provide public goods that the poor also consume. Such philanthropy is commonly perceived as legitimizing one’s wealth. Governments routinely exempt the rich from taxation on grounds of their charitable expenditures. We examine the logic of this exemption. We show that, rather than reducing inequality, philanthropy may actually exacerbate absolute inequality, while leaving the change in relative inequality ambiguous. Additionally, philanthropic preferences may increase the effectiveness of policies to redistribute income, instead of weakening them. Consequently, from an egalitarian perspective, the general case for exempting the wealthy from expropriation, on grounds of their public goods contributions, appears dubious.

Pages: 23 pages
Date: 2006-07
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.brunel.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/342673/CEDI_06-11.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.brunel.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/342673/CEDI_06-11.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.brunel.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/342673/CEDI_06-11.pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Should Egalitarians Expropriate Philanthropists? (2008)
Working Paper: Should Egalitarians Expropriate Philanthropists? (2007)
Working Paper: Should Egalitarians Expropriate Philanthropists? (2007)
Working Paper: Should Egalitarians Expropriate Philanthropists? (2007)
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:edb:cedidp:06-11

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEDI Discussion Paper Series from Centre for Economic Development and Institutions(CEDI), Brunel University CEDI, Brunel University,West London,UB8 3PH,United Kingdom. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sarmistha Pal ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).