Redistribution through a "Leaky Bucket". What explains the Leakages?

Fabio Padovano and Gilberto Turati ()

Economics Working Paper from Condorcet Center for political Economy at CREM-CNRS from Condorcet Center for political Economy

Abstract: This paper empirically examines to what extent political factors explain different performances in income redistribution in countries that vary in terms of size of the public sector, tax systems, political institutions and governance. In line with the theory, we use the difference in the ex ante and ex post Gini indices of income inequality as the measure of the degree of redistribution achieved. The estimates show that, holding the share of public spending on GDP constant, parliamentary systems and democracies achieve greater redistribution, while electoral district size, government cohesion, union influence and perceived corruption reduce redistribution. The disaggregation of spending items reveals that while transfers and interest payments do not influence redistribution, provision of public services, mainly health and education do, but the number of bureaucrats involved in such provisions has a negative impact. Within revenues, taxes on income redistribute more than other forms of levies.

Keywords: redistribution; political determinants; empirical analysis; ex ante and ex post Gini coefficients (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D78 H11 H53 I38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pbe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ged.univ-rennes1.fr/nuxeo/site/esupversion ... 5b-91ad-cdd75b38cafe (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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tut:cccrwp:2012-03-ccr

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
CREM (UMR CNRS 6211) - Faculty of Economics, 7 place Hoche, 35065 Rennes Cedex - France

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economics Working Paper from Condorcet Center for political Economy at CREM-CNRS from Condorcet Center for political Economy CREM (UMR CNRS 6211) – Faculty of Economics, 7 place Hoche, 35065 RENNES Cedex. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by GERMAIN Lucie ().