Unequal Societies: Income Distribution and the Social Contract
构建了一个关于不平等与社会契约的理论，解释为何美国和西欧在社会保障、再分配和教育融资上差异巨大，并指出再分配的政治支持随不平等加剧而下降，可能导致高不平等与低再分配相互强化的多重均衡。
This paper develops a theory of inequality and the social contract aiming to explain how countries with similar economic and political “fundamentals” can sustain such different systems of social insurance, fiscal redistribution, and education finance as those of the United States and Western Europe. With imperfect credit and insurance markets some redistributive policies can improve ex ante welfare, and this implies that their political support tends to decrease with inequality. Conversely, with credit constraints, lower redistribution translates into more persistent inequality; hence the potential for multiple steady states, with mutually reinforcing high inequality and low redistribution, or vice versa.