Every Author Agrees

Kammas and Sarantides develop a framework which allows them to examine fiscal redistribution around elections when democracy is not “the only game in town” and there is a threat of revolution from some groups of agents. They analyse data for a panel of 65 developed and developing countries over the past five decades. Fiscal redistribution is defined as the reduction in income inequality, brought about by government via taxes and transfers. Their findings indicate that only in countries characterized as young democracies do elections exert a positive impact on fiscal redistribution. Moreover, their work suggests that the effect of elections is strongest in young democracies characterized by relatively higher political instability.

Altorfer-Ong 07 (Stefan, The London School Of Economics and Politic Science: PhD and MSc Operating Head, APAC Chief Investment Office at UBS , “State-Building without Taxation. The Political Economy of Government Finance in the Eighteenth-Century Republic of Bern”, Economic History Department, London School of Economics and Political Science, Febuary 2007, , Accessed July 20, 2023) // CD

I will begin with a definition of fiscal redistribution to avoid misunderstandings about the scope of my analysis. In modern-day economics, fiscal redistribution is normally understood as the amount of money that is taxed from the rich and used for social transfer payments to the poor by comparing a pre-tax income distribution with the post-tax situation. For my analysis of eighteenth-century Bemese state finance, I understand fiscal redistribution in a broader sense as the way in which a state extracts revenue and spends it as expenditure. The pattern which ensues determines how resources that would have been used for different purposes in the absence of a fisc end up being redirected by the state. Other than many studies of fiscal history that focus on revenue and taxation in particular, my definition explicitly includes expenditure as well. In short, I define fiscal redistribution as the effect of accumulated revenue and expenditure by the government.

Pelke 21 (Lars, A Postdoc at the Institute of Political Science at the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg in a project on the Academic Freedom Index. Political Science and Public Law in Heidelberg and received a B.A in Political Science and Public Law, and a M.A. in Political Science from Heidelberg University a PhD from Heidelberg University (summa cum laude) research associate at the Institute of Political Science at Heidelberg University ,” Rethinking Inequality under Autocracy. Parties, Citizens, and Preferences”, Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences of the University of Heidelberg,3/26/2021, , Accessed July 20, 2023) // CD

The third central concept is (income) redistribution. As Tullock argues, ‘‘redistribution is probably the most important function of most modern governments’’ (Tullock, 2013, p. 1). However, the level of redistribution and its cross-sectional variation cannot be modeled using only purely economic explanations, such as the level of inequality in a given society (see McCarty & Pontusson, 2009). Therefore, I focus on the question of how political processes and institutions, such as autocratic ruling strategies and the degree of incumbent party institutionalization, determine the level of redistribution and inequality. In this dissertation, redistribution is broadly defined as the transfer of resources from one person or group to another person or group (see also Albertus, 2015; Boadway & Keen, 2000; Solt, 2020; Tullock, 2013). More precisely, income or fiscal redistribution is defined as the transfer of resources via taxes and fiscal transfer policies from one person or group to another. By contrast, land redistribution —a second influential type of redistribution (Albertus, 2015) —is defined as land reform measures that lead to a reallocation of land properties from landed elites to the landed poor.10 In addition, income redistribution is also often conceptualized as the transfer of resources to the poor.

Causa & Hermansen 19 (Orsetta, PhD in Economics, Paris School of Economics, Msc Economics, Paris School of Economics, ENS Cachan, OECD Economics Department, OECD Developement Centre, BNP Paribas, Equity Research, Lazard Freres, Mergers & Acquisitions. Mikkel PhD in Economics, Aarhus University, MSc in Economics, Aarhus University, OECD, Economics Department, Danish Economic Councils. “INCOME REDISTRIBUTION THROUGH TAXES AND TRANSFERS ACROSS OECD COUNTRIES”, OECD, 22 July 2019, , Accessed July 28, 2023) // CD

Over the past decades, household incomes have become more unequally distributed in most OECD countries. 2 Rising income inequality has not only been driven by soaring top income shares, but also in number of cases by a tendency for lower incomes to fall increasingly behind relative to the rest of the population (OECD, 2015a). While the extent, timing and characteristics of rising inequalities vary across OECD countries, one common feature is rising wage dispersion and in a number of countries increasing job polarisation. These forces are unlikely to disappear considering the pace of technological change and the (still uncertain) impact of digitalisation. This challenges governments’ fiscal redistribution through tax and transfer systems, all the more in a context where new forms of work are calling into question the effectiveness of traditional social safety nets and population ageing is putting pressure on the redistributive capacity of governments’ budgets. Yet, the tax and transfer system is a fundamental pillar of an inclusive growth policy agenda that aims at sharing the benefits of growth more equally and securing decent living standards for those in most need.

Enami et al. 17 (Ali is an Assistant Professor of Economics at The University of Akron. and received his PhD from the Department of Economics at Tulane University. His research focuses on the socioeconomic effects of fiscal policies., Nora Lustig is Samuel Z. Stone Professor of Latin American Economics and Director of the Commitment to Equity Institute (CEQ) at Tulane University. She is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, the Center for Global Development and the Inter-American Dialogue. Professor Lustig’s research is on economic development, inequality and social policies with emphasis on Latin America, Rodrigo Aranda PhD Tulane University, currently Post Doc at Georgia Policy Labs, Georgia State University, “Analytic Foundations: Measuring the Redistributive Impact of Taxes and Transfers”, Center for Global Development, January 2017, , Accessed July 28, 2023) //CD

This section derives the conditions for fiscal redistribution in a world of multiple fiscal interventions.17 We first derive the conditions for the simple one tax-one transfer case and, subsequently, for the case with multiple taxes and transfers. Suppose we observe that postfiscal income inequality is lower than pre-fiscal income inequality. Can we relate this finding to the characteristics of specific taxes and transfers in terms of indicators of progressivity and size? As demonstrated in the following section, once we leave the world of a single fiscal intervention, the relationship between inequality outcomes and the size and progressivity18 of fiscal interventions is complex and at times counter-intuitive. In particular, the relative size and progressivity of a fiscal intervention by itself can no longer tell us if inequality would be higher or lower without it. We will show that, under certain conditions, a fiscal system that includes a regressive tax can be more equalizing than a system that excludes it.19 In the same vein, a fiscal system that includes a progressive transfer can be less equalizing than a system that excludes it.

Caminada et al. 19 (Koen Caminada is Professor of Empirical Analysis of Tax and Social Policy at Leiden University, the Netherlands. He is Vice-Dean (Education) at the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs. Kees Goudswaard is Professor of Economics (0 fte) and Professor of Social Security (0,2 fte, a chair supported by Instituut Gak) at the Law School, Leiden University, Chen Wang is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Archaeology, Jinxian Wang is assistant professor at the department of Economics. “Has the redistributive effect of social transfers and taxes changed over time across countries?”, International Social Security Review, January 25, 2019, , Accessed July 28, 2023) // CD

On average, income inequality has decreased slightly and fiscal redistribution has risen since the Great Recession. The increase in fiscal redistribution comes mainly from social transfers while the redistributive effect of income taxes has been decreasing. Although all changes are rather small, our findings are not fully in line with the recent study by the OECD (Causa and Hermansen, 2017) that states that the economic recovery has not reduced income inequality, because redistribution has decreased recently in a majority of countries. However, both the OECD and this study find that fiscal redistribution dampened the increase in market income inequality since 2007, although there is a large variation across countries.

Guillaud et al. 17 (Elvire Guillaud is assistant professor of Economics at the University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne, and a member of the Centre d’Economie de la Sorbonne (CES). Her research focuses on the political economy of redistribution, institutional change, and the evolution of political demand in a comparative perspective, Matthew Olckers works as a research fellow in the School of Computer Science and Engineering at UNSW Sydney, studying how to build fair, transparent, and explainable AI. His training is in economics, and he completed his PhD at the Paris School of Economics and his undergraduate at the University of Cape Town, Michaël Zemmour is a political economist at the Sorbonne and Sciences Po. “Four levers of redistribution: The impact of tax and transfer systems on inequality reduction”, Lis Data Center, April 1, 2017, , Accessed July 28, 2023) // CD

Our analysis of monetary redistribution is sequential (see Figure 1). We first add transfers, which converts market income to gross income; then we apply fiscal redistribution (through taxes) to obtain disposable income3 . The advantage of this sequential approach, used in conjunction with the formula below, is that it allows: (i) comparing fiscal redistribution (due to taxes) with social redistribution (due to transfers) for each country-year observation; and (ii) comparing the four levers of redistribution over time and over space. A limitation is that the variables of the first and second terms of the equation are not comparable. The tax progressivity is not comparable with the targeting of transfers. Similarly, the tax rate is not comparable with the transfer rate. However, we can compare the magnitude of changes in inequality due to taxes, and due to transfers.