Abstract: Individual morality serves as a key driver of actions that often come at the expense of personal utility, particularly when contributing to public goods or fighting public bads. However, its influence on other decision-making domains, such as voting, remains largely unexplored. This paper studies the impact of individual morality on political support for public policies and its corresponding effect on the distribution of outcomes. I compare the political equilibrium of two societies: one composed of agents with moral considerations regarding the provision of a public good and the other consisting of agents who lack such considerations. Taxation finances two public policies: a redistributive transfer and an investment in the public good. Moral agents voluntarily contribute to the public good, leading to a higher and constrained Pareto-efficient provision. Since voluntary contributions satisfy the social demand for the public good, these agents prefer a lower tax rate, which they allocate entirely to redistribution. In contrast, in the non-moral society, agents rely on taxation to fund the public good and therefore vote for higher tax rates, which crowd out voluntary contributions. This behavioral and political mechanism has clear distributive implications. In the moral society, lower taxes imply smaller fiscal transfers to low-income agents. When ex-ante inequality is high or preferences for the public good are weak, this reduction in redistribution decreases the private consumption of poorer agents and increases ex-post inequality in disposable income, consumption, and utility. Thus, while morality enhances efficiency and raises the overall level of public-good provision, it can also widen disparities across agents by shifting the burden of collective provision from the State to individuals. Monte Carlo simulations using pretax income data from the World Inequality Database confirm the theoretical results and quantify the effects in terms of probabilities.

Presentations: ASSET Conference, Rabat, Morocco (2025), Post-Darwinian Societies Seminar, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium (2024), AMSE Ph.D. Seminar (2024), LAGV, Marseille, France (2023), AMSE Ph.D. Seminar (2023).

Abstract: Public pension schemes serve as mechanisms for inter-temporal income smoothing and within-cohort redistribution. This paper examines the influence of income and lifespan inequalities on the structure of a democratically chosen pension scheme. We use a probabilistic voting model where agents vote on the size and the degree of redistribution (i.e. the Beveridgean factor) of the pension and can supplement it with voluntary contributions. Our analysis reveals that when all agents can supplement the public scheme with private contributions, their voting behaviour depends solely on the share of total income redistributed through the pension system, referred to as the redistributive power of the pension. Income inequality positively correlates with the equilibrium redistributive power, while lifespan inequality exhibits the opposite effect, leading to a resource-time trade-off; particularly when both inequality measures are correlated. In scenarios where low earners are hand-to-mouth and unable to make voluntary contributions, the effects on pension size (through mandatory contributions) and degree of redistribution become disentangled. Income inequality diminishes pension size while augmenting redistribution, whereas lifespan inequality increases pension size while reducing redistribution. We provide empirical evidence from OECD countries that supports these theoretical findings and calibrate the model using French data to quantify the effects.

Presentations: INPeR/ENRSP Conference, Barcelona, Spain (2024), Economic Seminar U. Javeriana, Bogota, Colombia (2024), Annual Congress AFSE, Bordeaux, France (2024), ECINEQ, Aix-en-Provence, France (2023), LAGV, Marseille, France (2022), AMSE Ph.D. Seminar (2022),  LAGV, Marseille, France (2021), AMSE Ph.D. Seminar (2021).

Abstract: In most developing countries, informality is the norm rather than the exception; large shares of workers earn their income outside the tax and contributory systems, weakening both revenue and social insurance. The pervasiveness of this issue makes pension design pivotal. Public pensions are designed to serve as both commitment devices against present bias and tools for redistribution. However, their characteristics influence inter-temporal incentives and may affect coverage. I study how the degree of redistribution and the minimum contribution time required to qualify for benefits shape the formal labor supply of heterogeneous workers who can allocate work between a formal and a shadow sector. The model embeds present-biased preferences and a two-tier pension (a redistributive component and an earnings-related component) subject to a vesting requirement. I derive simple threshold conditions governing the formalization decision of low-productivity agents and show how these thresholds shift with redistribution and vesting time. A moderate increase in redistribution or a relaxation of the vesting requirement raises formal participation among low-productivity workers by improving the relative return to allocating time to the formal sector, while excessive redistribution can weaken incentives for higher-productivity workers. The results provide guidance for pension design when informality is pervasive and administrative enforcement is limited.