Abstract
Aspects of institutional quality vary substantially across countries, but are quite persistent over time. Further, institutional quality is correlated with income inequality, even among democracies. To account for these regularities, we offer a model where individual attitudes, toward inequality or trust in government, feature in voters’ preferences. The model displays path dependence, whereby inequality and institutional quality feed each other. It is suggested that this may explain the long shadow of historical legacies of postcolonial experiences. Simple correlations of reported attitudes using data from the World Values Surveys are consistent with the model.
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Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Gianmarco León, Joan Martínez, Tareena Musaddiq, Vanessa Rios, two anonymous referees and the editor, Guillermo Cruces for very helpful comments and suggestions. All remaining errors are obviously ours.
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Chong, A., Gradstein, M. Institutional persistence, income inequality, and individual attitudes. J Econ Inequal 17, 401–413 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10888-019-09414-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10888-019-09414-w