Premium
INEQUALITY, MAJORITY VOTING AND THE REDISTRIBUTIVE EFFECTS OF PUBLIC EDUCATION FUNDING
Author(s) -
Glomm Gerhard
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
pacific economic review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.34
H-Index - 33
eISSN - 1468-0106
pISSN - 1361-374X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0106.2004.00214.x
Subject(s) - redistribution (election) , inequality , economics , voting , public education , cash , majority rule , public spending , public economics , macroeconomics , economic growth , political science , mathematical analysis , mathematics , politics , law
. This paper documents that in poor countries redistribution in cash is negligible. To the extent that public education funding is redistributive, the lion's share of redistribution in poor countries is through public education budgets. I present a simple model of how inequality determines redistribution through public education spending when funding decisions are made through majority voting. Contrary to T. Persson and G. Tabellini, and contrary to conventional wisdom, in the present model higher inequality leads to less redistribution if the curvature in the utility function is sufficiently high. I argue that large curvature of the utility function is empirically relevant.