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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Economics

University of Massachusetts Amherst

Economics Department Working Paper Series

2005

Redistribution

Articles 1 - 3 of 3

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Racism, Xenophobia, And Redistribution, Woojin Lee, John Roemer, Karine Van Der Straeten Jan 2005

Racism, Xenophobia, And Redistribution, Woojin Lee, John Roemer, Karine Van Der Straeten

Economics Department Working Paper Series

We report here a summary of our recent research on the effect that the race issue, in the United States, and the immigration issue in European countries, is having on the degree of redistribution and the size of the public sector that is implemented through political competition. We model political competition as taking place on a two dimensional policy space, where the first issue is the tax rate, or the size of the public sector, and the second issue is the race or immigration issue. Our substantive conclusion is that the conservative economic agenda has been given new life in …


Values And Politics In The Us: An Equilibrium Analysis Of The 2004 Election, Woojin Lee, John Roemer Jan 2005

Values And Politics In The Us: An Equilibrium Analysis Of The 2004 Election, Woojin Lee, John Roemer

Economics Department Working Paper Series

The CNN exit polls after the 2004 election rated ‘moral values’ the most important issue; next came ‘jobs and the economy.’ Eighty percent of the voters who rated moral values the most important issue voted for Bush while eighty percent of the voters who rated jobs and the economy the most important voted for Kerry. We study the extent to which the distribution of voter opinion on moral values influences the positions that parties take on the economic issue, which we take to be the size of the public sector, through political competition. There are at least two distinct ways …


Free To Move: Migration, Tax Competition And Redistribution, Woojin Lee Jan 2005

Free To Move: Migration, Tax Competition And Redistribution, Woojin Lee

Economics Department Working Paper Series

We study a model of tax competition between two countries when both skilled and unskilled workers make their migration decisions simultaneously and wages are endogenously determined. If both factors of production are allowed to migrate freely and when the demand for skilled labor is not so elastic, the problem typically predicted in the literature of tax competition that increased mobility of production factors will pose a severe threat to redistribution possibility is less acute than it might first appear. The equilibrium tax rate can be not only positive but also increasing in the degree of mobility of unskilled workers. This …