Models of Other-Regarding Preferences and Redistribution

Abstract

In spite of the increasing popularity of comparative work on other-regarding preferences, the theoretical implications of different models of altruism are not always fully understood. This paper explores different theoretical approaches to altruism and elucidates their implications, paying particular attention to models of redistribution preferences where inequality explicitly triggers altruistic other-regarding motives for redistribution. While the main contribution of the paper is to clarify these theoretical models, we also illustrate the importance of having these distinct implications by analyzing some Western European data to compare among them. We draw on individual-level data from the European Social Survey (ESS) fielded between September 2002 and December 2013.

Keywords: Inequality, Redistribution, Political Economy, Industrialized Democracies