The Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship (CSDC), CIRANO and the Maison des affaires publiques et internationales present a conference featuring Björn Bremer (Central European University) and Tim Vlandas (Oxford University), two professors of comparative political economy.

Tim Vlandas (Oxford University) will present his paper “Ageing democracies and the new electoral politics of economic stagnation” and Björn Bremer (Central European University) will present "Taxing Uber Polluters? The Climate Crisis and Popular Support for Wealth Taxation".

This conference will be moderated by Olivier Jacques, assistant professor at the Université de Montréal's School of Public Health and CIRANO researcher.

→ This event will be in English.

• Tim Vlandas (Oxford University)
  Ageing democracies and the new electoral politics of economic stagnation

Abstract

Democracies have experienced profound population ageing in the last decades. Yet we still know little about the political consequences of ageing for economic performance. In this article, I develop a novel theoretical framework linking ageing to lower economic growth through two mechanisms: first, grey power pushes elected governments to expand old age policies thereby ‘crowding out’ more growth-enhancing policies; second, ageing populations weaken the electoral penalty for lower economic performance leading to ‘economic unaccountability’. Using microdata from four cross-national surveys of preferences and vote choices, I show that elderly individuals care more about pensions, but less about education, childcare and family policies, and during elections they are less likely to penalize governments for low growth. Using macrodata on 21 advanced economies since the 1960s, OLS and instrumental variable regressions provide evidence that ageing leads to more spending on pensions policies but less on education, family, and childcare policies, as well as public investments, and lower growth. Ageing countries may paradoxically become economically inefficient because they are politically representative.

• Björn Bremer (Central European University)
  Taxing Uber Polluters? The Climate Crisis and Popular Support for Wealth Taxation.

Abstract

Carbon inequality implies that asset-rich individuals contribute considerably more to climate change than asset-poor individuals. Moreover, the perception of distributional fairness is the most important determinant of public support for climate policy. Researchers thus argue for progressive climate policy, putting an additional financial burden on those causing the most emissions. Yet, the only progressive policy researchers have systematically studied is a rebate for low-income households paying regressive carbon taxes. We broaden the field’s scope by estimating the causal effect of exposure to a carbon inequality frame on public support for wealth taxation. A factorial survey experiment with a representative sample of the population in Germany demonstrates that support for a wealth tax is high ex ante and that this is not further increased by the carbon inequality frame. However, the frame increases support for spending additional revenue on climate policies. Moreover, a conjoint survey experiment shows that progressive spending increases respondents’ support for climate policy packages.