Aspirations of the middle class: Voting on redistribution and status concerns

Kai Konrad and Florian Morath

Discussion Papers, Research Professorship & Project "The Future of Fiscal Federalism" from WZB Berlin Social Science Center

Abstract: This paper analyzes the role of narrowly selfish and other-regarding preferences for the median voter in a Meltzer-Richard (1981) framework. We use computerized and real human co-players to distinguish between these sets of motivations. Redistribution to real co-players has a negative effect on the median voter's tax rate choice. Further, perceived income mobility decreases the desired amount of redistribution. Our results suggest the importance of concerns about own mobility as well as status concerns of the median voter who tends to keep distance to the low-income group, whereas inequity aversion does not play a role in the political economy context.

Keywords: Redistribution; other-regarding preferences; median voter; experiments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D03 D72 D78 H20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Aspirations of the middle class: voting on redistribution and status concerns (2011)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:wzbfff:spii2011102

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