Papers Page

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Loukas Karabarbounis

Papers

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Working Papers

The Political Economy of Intergenerational Income Mobility, forthcoming
with Andrea Ichino and Enrico Moretti

 

One Dollar, One Vote, September 2008
with Igor Barenboim

Abstract: We revisit the relationship between inequality and redistribution in a panel of advanced OECD countries. Using panel data methods that hold constant a variety of determinants of the public redistributive policy, we find a non-monotonic relationship between distribution of income and redistribution. Relatively to mean income, a more affluent rich and middle class are associated with lower, and a richer poor class with higher public spending for redistribution. These results are consistent with what we define as a one dollar, one vote politico-economic equilibrium: When the income of a group of citizens rises (relative to mean income), aggregate redistributive policies are tilted towards this group's most preferred public policy.  

Gender Based Taxation and the Division of Family Chores, November 2007, VoxEU summary
with Alberto Alesina, and Andrea Ichino

Abstract: Gender Based Taxation (GBT) satisfies Ramsey's optimal criterion by taxing less the more elastic labor supply of (married) women. This holds when different elasticities between men and women are taken as exogenous and primitive. But in this paper we also explore differences in gender elasticities which emerge endogenously in a model in which spouses bargain over the allocation of home duties. GBT changes spouses' implicit bargaining power and induces a more balanced allocation of house work and working opportunities between males and females. Because of decreasing returns to specialization in home and market work, social welfare improves by taxing conditional on gender. When income sharing within the family is substantial, both spouses may gain from GBT.  

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