Several recent studies link rising income inequality in the United States to the global financial crisis, arguing that US politicians did not respond to growing inequality with fiscal redistribution. Instead, Americans saved less and borrowed more to maintain relative consumption in the face of widening economic disparities. This article proposes a theory in which fiscal redistribution dampens the willingness of citizens to borrow to fund current consumption. A key implication is that pretax inequality will be more tightly linked with credit in less redistributive countries. The long-run partisan composition of government is, in turn, a key determinant of redistributive effort. Examining a panel of eighteen OECD democracies, the authors find that countries with limited histories of left-wing participation in government are significantly more likely see credit expansion as prefisc inequality grows compared to those in which the political left has been more influential.

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以信用

最近的几项研究将美国收入不平等的加剧与全球金融危机联系起来，认为美国政界人士没有通过财政再分配来应对日益加剧的不平等。相反，面对日益扩大的经济差距，美国人减少储蓄并增加借贷以维持相对消费。本文提出了一种理论，即财政再分配抑制了公民借贷以资助当前消费的意愿。一个关键的含义是，在再分配较少的国家，税前不平等将与信贷更紧密地联系在一起。反过来，政府的长期党派构成又是再分配努力的关键决定因素。审查由 18 个经合组织民主国家组成的小组，