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Every week, the Economics Group of King's Business School organises research seminars in economics. Bi-weekly the seminars are organised together with the Department of Political Economy and International Development. These seminars will take place on Wednesdays from 12.00 - 1.30 pm in Bush House, room (South) 3.01.

 

This week we welcome Laurent Bouton (Georgetown University).

 

"Electoral Systems and Inequalities in Government Interventions

 

Abstract:

This paper studies the political determinants of inequality in government interventions under the majoritarian and proportional representation systems. Using a model of electoral competition with targetable government interventions and heterogeneous localities, we uncover a novel relative electoral sensitivity effect in majoritarian systems. This effect, which depends on the geographic distribution of voters, can incentivize parties to allocate resources more equally under majoritarian systems than proportional representation systems. This contrasts with the conventional wisdom that government interventions are more unequal in majoritarian systems.

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