Documents Fazio, Andrea 2 results

"Using new data from a three-wave panel survey administered in Germany between May 2020 and May 2021, this paper studies the impact of a negative shock affecting every strata of the population, such as the development of COVID-19, on preferences for redistribution. Exploiting the plausibly exogenous change in severity of the infection rate at the county level, we show that, contrary to some theoretical expectations, the worse the crisis, the lower the support for redistribution of our respondents. We provide further suggestive evidence that this is not driven by a decrease in inequality aversion, but this might be the result of a decrease in trust in the institutions who are in charge of redistributive policies."

"We suggest that stabilizing the baseline income can make low-wage workers more tolerant towards high income earners. We present evidence of this attitude in the UK by exploiting the introduction of the National Minimum Wage (NMW), which institutionally sets a baseline pay reducing the risk of income losses and providing a clear reference point for British workers at the lower end of the income distribution. Based on data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), we show that workers who benefited from the NMW program became relatively more tolerant of high incomes and more likely to support and vote for the Conservative Party. As far as tolerance for high incomes is related to tolerance of inequality, our results may suggest that people advocate for equality also because they fear income losses below a given reference point."