Suchergebnisse

I propose a model of income redistribution in an open-economy environment. The world consists of a finite number of countries whose governments seek to maximize the welfare of their low-skilled populations by taxing skilled workers' labor income. While tax competition limits the extent to which redistribution is possible—as compared to the closed-economy outcome—when skilled people are internationally mobile, I argue that race to the bottom does not necessarily occur, even if the number of countries becomes arbitrarily large. The asymptotic sustainability of the welfare state crucially depends on the statistical properties of the probability distribution of skilled people's location preferences.

International audience ; The current debate on the role of regional politics in the Euro pean Union (EU) is dominated by approaches that focus upon either intergovernmental bargaining or multi-level govern ance. Because Structural Funds are the main EU-wide redis tributive policy, we propose to apply the traditional literature on partisan politics and national redistribution to the case of the EU. We use a new data set on both the distribution of Structural Funds across regions and the distribution of vote shares for different factions of the European Parliament. These data provide empirical details for some of the partisan competition that takes place at the regional level. Specifically, we show that the traditional left vs. right cleavage can have an impact on the size of regional transfers.

Les auteurs mettent en cause les politiques de sécurité sociale telles que pratiquées dans les pays occidentaux. Ils étudient la distribution des revenus et soulignent l'irrationalité qui la caractérise. Ils démontrent que l'analyse des inégalités sociales suppose qu'on en saisisse toutes les dimensions. Ils appliquent une méthode d'analyse aux statistiques des revenus au Canada. Après avoir étudié les implications d'un système fiscal, ils montrent les limites des politiques de transfert. Ils terminent en avançant quelques propositions pour une politique d'égalité.