Abstract
Abstract
This paper provides a novel foundation of inequality and political clientelism. First, we conduct an extensive-form game analysis to illustrate the nexus. Our paper demonstrates that with a high concentration of wealth, implying a lower income of people experiencing poverty, the elites can conduct political clientelism since it is enforceable and effective to capture sufficient de facto and collective-action power. We then conduct empirical investigations using two-stage least-squared estimations based on 104 democratic countries from 2002 to 2017 to test our theoretical conjecture. The empirical results suggest a strong correlation between clientelism and income inequality, confirming our anticipated pattern.
JEL Classification: P16, H23, D63.
Publisher
Research Square Platform LLC
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