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Redistribution tax under non-benevolent governments

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Abstract

I analyze redistribution policies of majority governments in one kind of representative voting system. I employ these assumptions: members gain special benefits in the majority; parties act strategically by using redistribution transfers; the member's utility function is given in a quasi-linear function; the government's objective functions are the weighted summation of utilities and I classify governments according to the weight. The four main results are: a stable majority dose not support myopic government; the stable redistribution policy of benevolent government is expressed by a scope of transfers; the stable transfer of non-benevolent governments depends on private utilities of the majority and opportunity costs of the minority; and the altruistic government is not displayed by any other majority, because it offers the total welfare of the majority to the minority as a subsidy.

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Tanaka, H. Redistribution tax under non-benevolent governments. Public Choice 96, 325–343 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1004924631650

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1004924631650

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