The Limits of Equality: Insights from the Israeli Kibbutz
利用以色列基布兹（平等社区）在1980年代末金融危机中的新数据，发现高收入者更易退出、财富能锁定成员、意识形态促进平等，揭示了流动性如何限制收入再分配。
What limits the capacity of society to redistribute? What determines the structure of compensation in organizations striving for income equality? This paper addresses these questions by investigating the economic and sociological forces underlying the persistence of the Israeli kibbutzim, communities based on the principle of income equality. To do this, I exploit newly assembled data on kibbutzim and a financial crisis in the late 1980s that affected them differentially. The main findings are that (1) productive individuals are the most likely to exit and a kibbutz's wealth serves as a lock-in device that increases the value of staying; (2) higher wealth reduces exit and supports a high degree of income equality; and (3) ideology facilitates income equality. Using a simple model, I show that these findings are consistent with a view of the kibbutz as providing optimal insurance when members have the option of leaving. More generally, these findings contribute to an understanding of how mobility limits redistribution, and to an understanding of the determinants of the sharing rule in other types of organizations, such as professional partnerships, cooperatives, and labor-managed firms.