They argue that the level of general education affects both the voters' income and their incentives to acquire political information. Poorer voters have on average lower levels of political knowledge and hence of electoral platforms. The resulting voting mistakes lower the political weight of poor voters and lead to parties converging to lower levels of redistribution than under complete information. The predictions of the formal model are tested empirically using US election survey data. They find that income and stated political viewpoints are more important in forming voting behavior for more informed voters than for less informed voters, hence confirming the theoretical model.
New explanation for the 'Redistribution Puzzle'
Working paper by Jo Thori Lind and Dominic Rohner: Standard models of electoral competition say that countries with many poor voters should have a high political pressure for increased redistribution. This seems not to be the case; in reality there is less redistribution than these models predict, and the level of redistribution is not highest in the countries these models predict. Jo Thori Lind, a postdoctoral fellow at ESOP, and Dominic Rohner, lecturer at University of York and ESOP network member, introduce a new mechanism that can account for this "redistribution puzzle", based on an unequal distribution of political knowledge.
Published Feb. 14, 2008 11:39 AM
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