TY - GEN A1 - Schwuchow, Sören C. T1 - Military Spending and Inequality in Autocracies: A Simple Model T2 - Peace Economics, Peace Science and Public Policy N2 - In this note, we outline a general framework for analyzing how inequality and military spending interact in a society governed by a rent-seeking autocrat. Relying on a general equilibrium model, we show that, generally, the autocrat utilizes the military for redistribution in favor of poorer citizens. However, the dictator’s own rent-seeking activity weakens the extent of redistribution and, in the extreme, can even reverse its direction, yielding more unequal secondary distributions instead. Accordingly, the initial level of inequality also affects the impact of military spending on inequality as the former has an impact on the extent of both, the regime’s rent-seeking activity as well as redistribution. Here, our model shows that primary and secondary distributions are rather equal for extreme initial equality/inequality. For medium levels of initial inequality, redistribution is rather large and can be in favor of the poor or of the rich, depending on the extent of rent-seeking and the primary distribution. Based on these results, we highlight the importance of a society’s institutional framework for analyzing the relation of inequality and military spending. KW - Inequality KW - autocracies KW - military spending KW - rent-seeking Y1 - 2018 UR - https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/peps.2018.24.issue-4/peps-2018-0025/peps-2018-0025.xml?format=INT U6 - https://doi.org/10.1515/peps-2018-0025 SN - 1554-8597 VL - 24 IS - 4 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Schwuchow, Sören C. T1 - Organized crime as a link between inequality and corruption T2 - European Journal of Law and Economics N2 - We study a model that establishes a novel theoretical rationale for the empirically well-documented relation between inequality and corruption. According to our model, inequality can nurture corruption by empowering organized crime because collusion between local police forces and criminal organizations is more likely in societies characterized by high inequality or weak security forces. Law enforcement and organized crime have a strong incentive to collude due to efficiency gains from specialization. However, their agreement breaks down when the mobsters can no longer credibly commit to joint rent maximization and thus start to compete with law enforcement for citizens’ wealth. The mobsters then non-violently monopolize the market for extortion by undercutting the police forces, similar to a strategy of predatory pricing. Criminal collusion is thus not very different from its corporate equivalent; hence, similar policy measures should be promising. In addition, our model also suggests that the criminal organization’s higher efficiency in extracting rents has a greater impact when the relative power between law enforcement and organized crime is rather balanced. Accordingly, when violent conflict becomes less predictable, non-violent elements of relative power become more relevant. Our model also allows for the interpretation that in the absence of strong social norms against corruption, organized crime is more difficult to challenge. KW - Inequality KW - Corruption KW - Organized crime KW - Public security Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10657-023-09764-x SN - 0929-1261 VL - 55 IS - 3 SP - 469 EP - 509 ER -