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AbstractI investigate the impact of voter turnout on top marginal tax rates in OECD countries between 1974 and 2013. I find that higher turnout leads to higher taxes for top earners, a result broadly consistent with the median voter theorem. Using novel survey data, I confirm that individuals in all but the wealthiest income bracket prefer higher taxes on the rich more than they prefer greater government spending in the economy. In line with these preferences, I find that turnout has a significantly negative effect on top income shares but no effect on the size of government or on public welfare expenditure. An instrumental variables approach confirms my findings. Overall, the paper is the first of its kind to link turnout to measures of redistribution that affect top earners and to preferences for redistribution.

This article examines the potential contribution of social enterprise to the "wicked" problem of creativity and literacy in a performative schooling environment, drawing on an ethnographic study of Ciento, a social enterprise organization that works with under-resourced young people, families, and communities in Melbourne, Australia. In light of the growing body of research on the ways in which schools navigate creativity and performativity, this article contributes new knowledge on non-school organizations that is largely missing from this conversation, as well as new insights on the operations of education-focused social enterprises in Australia. It considers the social, political, and historical factors that have shaped this unique space of educational "wickedity" and the ways in which organizational rationales and practices, as well as the experiences and views of staff and participants, indicate a complex, promising, and innovative approach to educational problem-solving.

What factors lead underrepresented groups to gain more political representation? I digitize a novel source of data that contains records of Hispanics elected to public office from the local to the federal level from 1984 to 1994 and exploit variation in legal status arising from the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), which legalized three million Hispanic migrants in the United States, to shed light on this question. I find that counties with more per capita legalized migrants experience significant increases in the number of Hispanics in public office around 1992 when the migrants first gained the right to vote. The result is driven almost entirely by increases at the local level, in particular school board members and mayors of small towns, and is stronger in counties with larger Hispanic populations, pointing to network effects. Individuals in IRCA-affected counties are more politically active, lending credence to the view that the political engagement of the newly legalized helps drive the results. I find no evidence for increased Hispanic candidate entry. Finally, I provide indirect evidence that demand for representation, rather than candidate competence, drives Hispanic selection to public office. Together, the results open a new dimension to the economics of legal status: its effects on political representation.

This paper documents the impact of voter turnout on top marginal tax rates in the 34 OECD countries for the period between 1974 and 2014. Across a number of specifications, I find that increases in voter turnout have a positive and statistically significant effect on top tax rates. This finding is broadly consistent with the median voter theorem that posits government redistribution to be a function of the income of the median voter. Because turnout has fallen drastically in the decades leading to 2014, and because the decrease is strongly correlated with income, the pivotal voter is no longer the one whose income lies near the median of the overall income distribution but instead the one whose income is at the median of a much richer subset of the distribution. Using ordinary least squares estimation as well as panel data methods, I find that increases in turnout are associated with higher rates of income tax for top earners. An instrumental variables approach confirms my hypothesis, though the estimates are less precisely estimated.

Market forces are often considered the principal determinants of income inequality. While this paper does not dispute the pivotal role economic forces play in generating and distributing wealth, it questions whether economic rationale alone can explain income disparities that are everywhere occurring as a result of the gross accumulation of wealth by the top percentile. In this connection, the role of politics in contributing to rising levels of inequality has received little attention. The purpose of this paper is thus to examine the role and influence of organised interests in shaping policies that promote rising levels of income inequality in Canada. It begins by tracing the resurgence of inequality across the globe and in Canada. It then questions the assertion of the median voter theorem that government policies inevitably converge to the preferences of voters located in the median of the voter distribution. It goes on to describe the ability of business and economic elites to overcome collective action problems and to utilise financial, technical and human resources to achieve policy outcomes in their favour and, finally, it attempts to discuss some of the implications for public policy.

What happens to the distribution of public resources when undocumented migrants obtain legal status through nation-wide amnesty? In this paper, we exploit variation in legal status from the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) to answer this question and find that state governors, of whatever party affiliation, allocate more per capita aid to those counties affected by the IRCA. We posit that this is borne out of rational, forward-looking governors who allocate resources strategically in pursuit of the votes of the newly legalised who were eligible to vote five years after legalisation. To support this view, we find that the distribution of state aid differs significantly according to political context. Counties affected by the IRCA receive more resources from the state when their governor is eligible for re-election, faces political competition or enjoys line-item veto power. Our results also indicate that the transfers were targeted to the newly legalised, who by and large were of Hispanic origin, and not other constituents. We find no evidence of anti-migrant sentiment confounding our results. Counties that received more transfers from the governor also experienced improvements in Hispanic high school completion rates.