Voting for Redistribution under Desert‐Sensitive Altruism*
研究了在个人技能和工作偏好不同的情况下，利他主义偏好如何影响再分配政策的投票结果，发现应得敏感动机导致更低的再分配水平，且美国比欧洲更显著。
Abstract We endow individuals who differ in skills and tastes for working, with altruistic preferences for redistribution in a voting model where a unidimensional redistributive parameter is chosen by majority voting in a direct democracy. When altruistic preferences are desert‐sensitive (i.e., when there is a reluctance to redistribute from the hard‐working to the lazy), we show that lower levels of redistribution emerge in political equilibrium. We provide empirical evidence that preferences for redistribution are not purely selfish, and that desert‐sensitive motivations play a significant role. We estimate that preferences for redistribution are significantly more desert‐sensitive in the US than in Europe.