Distributive Politics and Economic Growth
用一个内生增长模型研究政治冲突与经济增长的关系，分析不同阶级（工人和资本家）的政治影响力如何影响税收、公共投资和增长，并发现民主制度下财富越不平等，税率越高、增长率越低。
This paper studies the relationship between political conflict and economic growth in a simple model of endogenous growth with distributive conflicts. We study both the case of two "classes" (workers and capitalists) and the case of a continuum distribution of agents, characterized by different capital/labor shares. We establish several results concerning the relationship between the political influence of the two groups and the level of taxation, public investment, redistribution of income and growth. For example, it is shown that policies which maximize growth are optimal only for a government that cares only about the "capitalists." Also, we show that in a democracy (where the "median voter theorem' applies) the rate of taxation is higher and the rate of growth lower, the more unequal is the distribution of wealth We present empirical results consistent with these implications of the model.