Two-sided intergenerational transfer policy and economic development: A politico-economic approach

We consider an overlapping generations model with public education and social security financed by labor income taxation, in which the overall size of these policies is determined in a repeated majority voting game. We investigate the interaction between these policies and economic development in stationary Markov perfect equilibria. In the politico-economic equilibrium, the labor income tax rate is represented as a linear increasing function of the ratio of the decisive voter's human capital and the average human capital level. A high level of initial income inequality reduces the size of public policies and retards economic growth. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.