(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)"> (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)">
[go: up one dir, main page]

IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/jeczfn/v91y2007i1p1-40.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Economic Growth and (Re-)Distributive Policies in a Non-cooperative World

Author

Listed:
  • Günther Rehme
Abstract
Many models show that redistribution is bad for growth. This paper argues that in a non-cooperative world optimizing, redistributing (’left-wing’) governments mimic non-redistributing (’right-wing’) policies for fear of capital loss if capital markets become highly integrated and the countries are technologically similar. ’Left-right’ competition leads to more redistribution and lower GDP growth than ’left-left’ competition. Efficiency differences allow for higher GDP growth and more redistribution than one’s opponent. Irrespective of efficiency differences, however, ’left-wing’ governments have higher GDP growth when competing with other ’left-wing’ governments. The results may explain why one observes a positive correlation between redistribution and growth across countries, and why capital inflows and current account deficits may be good for relatively high growth.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Günther Rehme, 2007. "Economic Growth and (Re-)Distributive Policies in a Non-cooperative World," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 91(1), pages 1-40, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:kap:jeczfn:v:91:y:2007:i:1:p:1-40
    DOI: 10.1007/s00712-006-0226-2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s00712-006-0226-2
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s00712-006-0226-2?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bertola, Giuseppe, 1993. "Factor Shares and Savings in Endogenous Growth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(5), pages 1184-1198, December.
    2. Sinn, Hans-Werner, 1990. "Tax harmonization and tax competition in Europe," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 34(2-3), pages 489-504, May.
    3. Alberto Alesina & Dani Rodrik, 1994. "Distributive Politics and Economic Growth," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(2), pages 465-490.
    4. Rehme, Günther, 2000. "Economic growth and (R-) distributive policies: a comparative dynamic analysis," Publications of Darmstadt Technical University, Institute for Business Studies (BWL) 7358, Darmstadt Technical University, Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law, Institute for Business Studies (BWL).
    5. Amiel,Yoram & Cowell,Frank, 1999. "Thinking about Inequality," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521466967, September.
    6. Stephen J. Turnovsky, 1997. "International Macroeconomic Dynamics," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262201119, April.
    7. Oded Galor & Joseph Zeira, 1993. "Income Distribution and Macroeconomics," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 60(1), pages 35-52.
    8. Barro, Robert J & Mankiw, N Gregory & Sala-i-Martin, Xavier, 1995. "Capital Mobility in Neoclassical Models of Growth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(1), pages 103-115, March.
    9. Roberto Perotti, 1993. "Political Equilibrium, Income Distribution, and Growth," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 60(4), pages 755-776.
    10. Roger H. Gordon, 1983. "An Optimal Taxation Approach to Fiscal Federalism," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 98(4), pages 567-586.
    11. Lucas, Robert E, Jr, 1990. "Why Doesn't Capital Flow from Rich to Poor Countries?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(2), pages 92-96, May.
    12. Sala-i-Martin, Xavier X, 1996. "A Positive Theory of Social Security," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 1(2), pages 277-304, June.
    13. Torsten Persson, 1992. "Politics and economic policy," Discussion Paper / Institute for Empirical Macroeconomics 62, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    14. repec:dau:papers:123456789/10091 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Kanbur, Ravi & Keen, Michael, 1993. "Jeux Sans Frontieres: Tax Competition and Tax Coordination When Countries Differ in Size," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(4), pages 877-892, September.
    16. Enrique G. Mendoza & Linda L. Tesar, 2003. "Winners and Losers of Tax Competition in the European Union," NBER Working Papers 10051, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Judd, Kenneth L., 1999. "Optimal taxation and spending in general competitive growth models," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(1), pages 1-26, January.
    18. Branko Milanovic, 2003. "The median voter hypothesis, income inequality and income," HEW 0305001, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Devereux, Michael B. & Shi, Shouyong, 1991. "Capital accumulation and the current account in a two-country model," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(1-2), pages 1-25, February.
    20. Cecilia Garcia-Penalosa & Eve Caroli & Philippe Aghion, 1999. "Inequality and Economic Growth: The Perspective of the New Growth Theories," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 37(4), pages 1615-1660, December.
    21. Barro, Robert J, 1990. "Government Spending in a Simple Model of Endogenous Growth," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(5), pages 103-126, October.
    22. Lancaster, Kelvin, 1973. "The Dynamic Inefficiency of Capitalism," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(5), pages 1092-1109, Sept.-Oct.
    23. Wildasin, David E., 1988. "Nash equilibria in models of fiscal competition," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 229-240, March.
    24. Paul, Gilles Saint & Verdier, Thierry, 1996. "Inequality, redistribution and growth: A challenge to the conventional political economy approach," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(3-5), pages 719-728, April.
    25. Torsten Persson & Guido Tabellini, 1992. "The Politics of 1992: Fiscal Policy and European Integration," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 59(4), pages 689-701.
    26. Rehme, Gunther, 1999. "Why are the data at odds with theory? : growth and (re-)distributive policies in integrated economies," Economics Working Papers ECO 1999/43, European University Institute.
    27. Easterly, William & Rebelo, Sergio, 1993. "Fiscal policy and economic growth: An empirical investigation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 417-458, December.
    28. Rehme, Gunther, 1997. "Economic growth, (re-)distributive policies, capital mobility and tax competition in open economies," Economics Working Papers ECO 1997/24, European University Institute.
    29. Holger Strulik, 2002. "Fiscal Policy Reforms in a Global Economy," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 9(1), pages 73-91, January.
    30. Chamley, Christophe, 1992. "The last shall be first: Efficient constraints on foreign borrowing in a model of endogenous growth," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 335-354, December.
    31. Enrique G. Mendoza & Linda L. Tesar, 2003. "A Quantitative Analysis of Tax Competition v. Tax Coordination under Perfect Capital Mobility," NBER Working Papers 9746, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    32. Partha Dasgupta & Eric Maskin, 1986. "The Existence of Equilibrium in Discontinuous Economic Games, I: Theory," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 53(1), pages 1-26.
    33. Milanovic, Branko, 2000. "The median-voter hypothesis, income inequality, and income redistribution: an empirical test with the required data," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 16(3), pages 367-410, September.
    34. Patrick J. Kehoe, 1989. "Policy Cooperation Among Benevolent Governments May Be Undesirable," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 56(2), pages 289-296.
    35. Rehme, Gunther, 1995. "Redistribution, wealth tax competition and capital flight in growing economies," Economics Working Papers ECO 1995/09, European University Institute.
    36. Jaume Ventura, 1997. "Growth and Interdependence," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(1), pages 57-84.
    37. Bond, Eric W & Samuelson, Larry, 1989. "Strategic Behaviour and the Rules for International Taxation of Capital," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 99(398), pages 1099-1111, December.
    38. CHAMLEY, Christophe, 1992. "The last shall be first: efficient constraints on foreign borrowing in a model of endogenous growth," LIDAM Reprints CORE 1032, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    39. J. R. Hicks, 1936. "Distribution and Economic Progress: A Revised Version," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 4(1), pages 1-12.
    40. Lee, Woojin & Roemer, John E, 1998. "Income Distribution, Redistributive Politics, and Economic Growth," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 3(3), pages 217-240, September.
    41. Wilson, John D., 1986. "A theory of interregional tax competition," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 296-315, May.
    42. Devereux, Michael B & Mansoorian, Arman, 1992. "International Fiscal Policy Coordination and Economic Growth," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 33(2), pages 249-268, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Rehme, Günther, 2014. "Endogenous (re-)distributive policies and economic growth: A comparative static analysis," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 355-366.
    2. Ushakov Denis & Natalia Bandurina & Sergey Shkodinsky, 2017. "Country s Welfare as an Efficiency Factor in Fiscal Policy Promoting Economig Growth," Montenegrin Journal of Economics, Economic Laboratory for Transition Research (ELIT), vol. 13(2), pages 121-127.
    3. Toshiki Tamai, 2015. "Redistributive taxation, wealth distribution, and economic growth," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 115(2), pages 133-152, June.
    4. repec:mje:mjejnl:v:12:y:2017:i:2:p:121-127 is not listed on IDEAS

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rehme, Gunther, 2006. "Redistribution and economic growth in integrated economies," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 392-408, June.
    2. Günther Rehme, 2002. "(Re-)Distribution of Personal Incomes, Education and Economic Performance Across Countries," CESifo Working Paper Series 711, CESifo.
    3. Rehme, Günther, 2014. "Endogenous (re-)distributive policies and economic growth: A comparative static analysis," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 355-366.
    4. Rehme, G., 1997. "Economic Growth, (Re-)Distributive Policies, Capital Mobility and Tax Competition in Open Economies," Economics Working Papers eco97/24, European University Institute.
    5. Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel & José-Carlos Tello, 2014. "The Political Economy of Growth, Inequality, the Size and Composition of Government Spending," Working Papers 19, Peruvian Economic Association.
    6. Carl-Johan Dalgaard & Henrik Hansen & Theo Larsen, 2003. "Income Skewness, Redistribution and Growth: A Reconciliation," EPRU Working Paper Series 03-14, Economic Policy Research Unit (EPRU), University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics.
    7. Enea Baselgia & Reto Foellmi, 2022. "Inequality and growth: a review on a great open debate in economics," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2022-5, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    8. Holger Strulik, 2007. "A distributional theory of government growth," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 132(3), pages 305-318, September.
    9. Asplund, Rita, 2004. "A Macroeconomic Perspective on Education and Inequality," Discussion Papers 906, The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy.
    10. Rehme, Günther, 2000. "Economic growth and (R-) distributive policies: a comparative dynamic analysis," Publications of Darmstadt Technical University, Institute for Business Studies (BWL) 7358, Darmstadt Technical University, Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law, Institute for Business Studies (BWL).
    11. Panizza, Ugo, 2002. "Income Inequality and Economic Growth: Evidence from American Data," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 7(1), pages 25-41, March.
    12. Lisa Grazzini & Tanguy Van Ypersele, 2003. "Fiscal Coordination and Political Competition," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 5(2), pages 305-325, April.
    13. Christophe Ehrhart, 2009. "The effects of inequality on growth: a survey of the theoretical and empirical literature," Working Papers 107, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    14. Günther Rehme, 2011. "Endogenous Policy And Cross‐Country Growth Empirics," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 58(2), pages 262-296, May.
    15. Mr. Hyun Park, 2006. "Expenditure Composition and Distortionary Tax for Equitable Economic Growth," IMF Working Papers 2006/165, International Monetary Fund.
    16. Aysan, Ahmet Faruk, 2005. "The Role of Efficiency of Redistributive Institutions on Redistribution: An Empirical Assessment," MPRA Paper 17773, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Ugo Panizza, 1999. "Desigualdad del ingreso y crecimiento económico: elementos de juicio de datos de USA," Research Department Publications 4179, Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department.
    18. Christiane Clemens & Maik Heinemann, 2005. "Distributional Conflict, Political Cycles And Growth," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 73(4), pages 500-521, July.
    19. Chang, Roberto, 1998. "Political party negotiations, income distribution, and endogenous growth," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(2), pages 227-255, April.
    20. Zsolt Becsi, 1998. "Fiscal competition and reality: A time series approach," FRB Atlanta Working Paper 98-19, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    growth; distribution; tax competition; capital mobility; O4; H21; D33; C72; F21;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O4 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity
    • H21 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Efficiency; Optimal Taxation
    • D33 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Factor Income Distribution
    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • F21 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - International Investment; Long-Term Capital Movements

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:jeczfn:v:91:y:2007:i:1:p:1-40. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.