Trust in Government and Redistributive Preferences

Can trust in government explain people's support for redistribution? Inspired by a recent economic research exploring the relationship between people’s perception of inequality and their redistributive preferences by... [ view full abstract ]

Can trust in government explain people's support for redistribution? Inspired by a recent economic research exploring the relationship between people’s perception of inequality and their redistributive preferences by Kuziemko et al.(2015), this research strives to take the next step by testing one of the main hypotheses authors presented in the paper: the lack of trust in government might be preventing people from supporting redistributive policies despite perceiving inequality as a serious problem. By addressing the posed question, this research aims to 1) adopt theories from Political Science, Psychology, and Economics to identify sources of political trust and ways to influence them, and 2) establish the causal relationship between people’s trust in government and their redistributive preferences. Considering that inequality has become a defining issue of our time, results from this research entail significant political, social, and economic implications for the policymakers in the US.