In this paper, we introduce a skewness-adjusted social-preferences functional, which models social preferences as a function of the skewness of the human capital distribution. We hypothesize that the “elite” of the society becomes more selfish with increasing skewness of the human-capital...

Debating over efficiency-enhancing but inequality-increasing reforms accounts for the routine business of democratic institutions. Fernandez and Rodrik (1991) hold that anti-reform bias can be attributed to individual-specific uncertainty regarding the distribution of gains and losses resulting...