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  3. American Economic Review
  4. March 2000
  5. Unequal Societies: Income Distribution and the Social Contract

American Economic Review

ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)

Unequal Societies: Income Distribution and the Social Contract

  • Roland Benabou
American Economic Review
vol. 90, no. 1, March 2000
(pp. 96–129)
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Abstract

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.

Citation

Benabou, Roland. 2000. "Unequal Societies: Income Distribution and the Social Contract." American Economic Review, 90 (1): 96–129. DOI: 10.1257/aer.90.1.96

JEL Classification

  • D31 Personal Income, Wealth, and Their Distributions
  • P16 Capitalist Systems: Political Economy
  • I22 Educational Finance
  • E62 Fiscal Policy