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Gubello, Michele
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Gubello, Michele
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- PublicationSocial Trust and the Support for Universal Basic IncomeThis paper presents a theoretical model showing how political mistrust affects people’s preferences for Universal Basic Income (UBI) when its implementation involves a reduction in spending for other public services (welfare retrenchment). The model shows that individuals with lower levels of political mistrust are more likely to endorse UBI, reflecting their trust in the government’s ability to manage public resources and avoid wasteful retrenchment of other public services. The model also shows that generalised mistrust — characterized by agents’ expectations of their fellow citizens’ misbehaviour that can reduce the government’s fiscal capacity— does not significantly influence preferences for UBI when it involves a partial retrenchment of other public services. This result is driven by the agents’ perception that their fellow citizens’ misbehaviour would occur irrespective of the UBI implementation. The empirical analysis with 265 European regions from the European Social Survey (ESS) confirms the predictions of the model.
117 - PublicationWeakly Progressive: Disproportionate Higher Education Attendance and the Structure of Income TaxesThis paper studies the effect of income tax progressivity on the disproportionate usage of publicly funded higher education. We develop a rational choice model showing that more progressive tax systems increase poorer households’ net fiscal benefit, making their children more likely to attend university. The model also shows that weakly progressive tax systems can determine a ”perverse redistribution”, in which poorer households subsidize the higher education for richer households. With this model, we develop three empirically testable hypotheses, where (i) countries with higher levels of progressivity have higher enrollment rate in higher education; (ii) the parental income gradient in children’s higher education attendance is lower in countries with more progressive tax systems; and (iii) countries with more progressive tax systems have a lower perverse redistribution in higher education. The model also analyzes the role of local progressivity in higher education choice and redistribution. We provide empirical validation for our model’s conclusions across European-OECD countries.
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