Living in the Garden of Eden: Mineral resources and preferences for redistribution

Mathieu Couttenier (1) , Marc Sangnier (2)

1 HEC Lausanne - Faculté des Hautes Etudes Commerciales (HEC Lausanne)
2 GREQAM - Groupement de Recherche en Économie Quantitative d'Aix-Marseille

This paper provides empirical evidence that mineral resources abundance is associated to preferences for redistribution in the United States. We show that individuals living in states with large mineral resources endowment are more opposed to redistribution than others. We take advantage of both the spatial and the temporal distributions of mineral resources discoveries since 1800 to uncover two mechanisms through which mineral resources can foster ones’ opposition to redistribution: either by transmission of values formed in the past, or by the exposure to mineral discoveries during individuals’ life-time. We show that both mechanisms matter to explain respondents’ preferences.

Mots clés: Mineral resources; Persistence; Redistribution

Domaines: Sciences de l'Homme et Société; Economies et finances

Mathieu Couttenier, Marc Sangnier. Living in the Garden of Eden: Mineral resources and preferences for redistribution. Journal of Comparative Economics, 2015, 43 (2), pp.243-256. ⟨10.1016/j.jce.2015.01.008⟩. ⟨hal-01457324⟩