| This paper considers a world where politicians have two policy instruments: the provision of an indivisible public good and redistribution. It studies the effect of heterogeneity in preferences for the public good on the incentives of politicians to target transfers to voters through redistribution. It is demonstrated that in equilibrium voters who have a low intensity of preference for the public good get higher average transfers than high intensity voters. This is explained by the fact that low intensity voters face a lower opportunity cost of not getting the public good, so their votes are cheaper to obtain when a redistributing candidate competes against a candidate who proposes the public good. Consequently, candidates allocate more resources towards obtaining these cheaper votes. |
