Timeline for Theory of and studies on the long-term effect of governmental redistribution
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
13 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 24, 2020 at 0:23 | comment | added | BB King | That does not (necessarily) destroy incentives (in this context). | |
| May 24, 2020 at 0:12 | comment | added | Philip Meyer | Doesn't governmental transfer of money mean someone is being paid for something they did not do? Or paid for being poor? | |
| May 23, 2020 at 22:04 | comment | added | BB King | There are no changing incentives from lump sum transfers in that framework as far as I understand it. This is because decisions are made by marginal analysis and there are no reservation wages etc. | |
| May 23, 2020 at 21:46 | comment | added | Philip Meyer | Actually, I don't believe the 2nd welfare theorem factors-in possible changing incentives of poor people receiving the money does it? | |
| May 23, 2020 at 21:39 | vote | accept | Philip Meyer | ||
| May 23, 2020 at 21:39 | comment | added | Philip Meyer | *as long as lump-sum taxes are used. | |
| May 23, 2020 at 21:31 | comment | added | Philip Meyer | @BBKing Regarding your last paragraph, I specified "long-term absolute well-being of poor people" because of the theoretical long-term tradeoff between inequality and growth. Poor people would be helped initially, but long-term losses in innovation could make them worse off eventually. But I see that the Second Welfare Theorem shows this is not necessarily true in theory. | |
| May 22, 2020 at 19:04 | comment | added | 1muflon1♦ | no I agree on everything else with you except for the attribution to the second welfare theorem- I think that’s a stretch but it’s also difficult to answer broad questions like this so I see where you are coming from | |
| May 22, 2020 at 19:02 | comment | added | BB King | I acknowledge such a line of argument is a bit speculative, but I would argue any answer to a question of what some respondent was thinking may be speculative to some degree. | |
| May 22, 2020 at 18:58 | comment | added | BB King | Completely agree with you. At best, I am aiming to provide a partial answer and cannot answer the increase between 90s and 2000s. However, my sense is that it is unsurprising that anyone familiar with the welfare theorems (i.e. any economist) would agree with the general survey statement as it is posed in OPs question. The answer that "I agree (with provisions), that it is a legitimate role for the government to redistribute wealth." to an economist might simply mean I agree that it is legitimate under the provisions that all the necessary assumptions hold. | |
| May 22, 2020 at 18:57 | comment | added | 1muflon1♦ | Rather what I think that caused the change was 1. There were great strides made in the areas of optimal income taxation and redistribution. 2. Study of inequality ceased to be taboo. 3. Nowadays we can make better evaluation of social programs and make them in evidence based way thanks to randomizes control trials and revolutions in IT. 4. Actual shifts in political ideology/culture over time especially in US | |
| May 22, 2020 at 18:51 | comment | added | 1muflon1♦ | It’s true that 2nd welfare theorem says that - but virtually the whole public economics literature exists because 2nd welfare theorem requires there to be no information asymmetry between government and people as well as government being run by socially benevolent social planner -which is not satisfied- I would agree that recent advances in public economics and it’s not just might have caused this shift but I don’t think you can attribute to the theorem itself. Also the second welfare theorem was already well known back in 70s so how could it even explain shift between 90s and 2000s? | |
| May 22, 2020 at 17:59 | history | answered | BB King | CC BY-SA 4.0 |