Institutional persistence, income inequality, and individual attitudes

Aspects of institutional quality vary substantially across countries, but are quite persistent over time. Further, institutional quality is correlated with income inequality, even among democracies. To account for these regularities, we offer a model where individual attitudes, toward inequality or...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of economic inequality Vol. 17; no. 3; pp. 401 - 413
Main Authors Chong, Alberto, Gradstein, Mark
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York Springer US 01.09.2019
Springer
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Analysis
Democracy
Development Economics
Economic Growth
Economics
Economics and Finance
Income distribution
Income inequality
International Economics
Personal income
Political Science
Public Finance
H8
Institutional persistence
Attitudes
I2
O1
Inequality
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Summary:Aspects of institutional quality vary substantially across countries, but are quite persistent over time. Further, institutional quality is correlated with income inequality, even among democracies. To account for these regularities, we offer a model where individual attitudes, toward inequality or trust in government, feature in voters’ preferences. The model displays path dependence, whereby inequality and institutional quality feed each other. It is suggested that this may explain the long shadow of historical legacies of postcolonial experiences. Simple correlations of reported attitudes using data from the World Values Surveys are consistent with the model.
ISSN:1569-1721
1573-8701
DOI:10.1007/s10888-019-09414-w