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The most striking feature of liberal democracies is the coexistence of large inequalities of wealth with a roughly egalitarian distribution of voting power. So far most attempts to explain this have asked ‘why don’t the poor form a coalition to expropriate the rich?’ This paper argues that this is not necessarily the best way to interpret the problem and attempts to provide an alternative unified political-economic model that is more consistent with standard assumptions about voting. This is done by studying what would happen if every possible coalition could form in a wealth distribution game. Among the main findings is that, if the marginal contribution of every individual to production is increasing sufficiently, there is a stable distribution of the product. This may include the egalitarian distribution. If individuals are not so valuable there is no stable distribution.

Item Type:	Refereed Article
Keywords:	political-economy, distribution, voting, cooperative game theory, core
Research Division:	Studies in Human Society
Research Group:	Political Science
Research Field:	Political Science not elsewhere classified
Objective Division:	Economic Framework
Objective Group:	Macroeconomics
Objective Field:	Income Distribution
Author:	Coram, A (Professor Alex Coram)
ID Code:	56025
Year Published:	2008
Web of Science® Times Cited:	2
Deposited By:	Government
Deposited On:	2009-03-22
Last Modified:	2012-11-28
Downloads:	0