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Gene M. Grossman, Elhanan Helpman
NBER Working Paper No. 5447*
Issued in January 1996
NBER Program(s): EFG
PE
---- Abstract -----
We study the politics of intergenerational redistribution in an overlapping generations model with short-lived governments. The successive governmentsþwho care about the welfare of the currently living generations and possibly about campaign contributionsþare unable to pre-commit the future course of redistributive taxation. In a stationary politico-economic equilibrium, the tax rate in each period depends on the current value of the state variable and all expectations about future political outcomes are fulfilled. We find that there exist multiple stationary equilibria in many political settings. Steady-state welfare is often lower than it would be in the absence of redistributive politics.
*Published: Economic Journal, Vol. 108, no. 45 (September 1998): 1299-1325.
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