Deceptive redistribution

While some policies can enhance welfare, occasionally they may also provide rents to politicians. Opportunism is usually constrained by the policymakers' reputation concerns. However, if instances of rent-seeking are not easily identified, the strength of these concerns hinges on the informed constituents' ability to share their knowledge with the rest of society. We show that governments use excessive redistribution to discourage the communication of information. In contrast to the standard view that inefficient policies are necessary to implement redistribution, we argue that redistribution can perpetuate inefficient policies that generate private rents to politicians.