Choosing conflict: Explaining the form of redistributive policies

Although virtually every government redistributes wealth for electoral purposes, the level and form of such transfers vary dramatically across countries. In some countries, redistribution is primarily broad in nature with benefits going to large segments of the population without mediation by industry or region. In other countries, redistribution is targeted to narrow segments of the population. This dissertation offers an explanation for the observed and previously unexplained differences in transfer form across countries based on the level of domestic labor specificity.; Domestic preferences over transfer form vary systematically with the costs of moving between uses in a given economy. Workers for whom it is prohibitively costly to move to a new use prefer narrowly targeted transfers designed specifically to benefit their current industry. In contrast, mobile workers who can move easily between uses prefer broadly targeted transfers from which they can benefit regardless of where they are employed in the economy. As a result, politicians in countries with relatively immobile labor forces will tend to provide more narrowly targeted transfers than broad. Cross-national variance in transfer form can therefore be explained by variance in domestic demands for narrow transfers stemming from the costs of adjustment.; I test this theory using quantitative measures of labor mobility for over 50 countries from 1970 to 1999. Three different measures of transfer form are used including subsidies, tariffs and international disputes over narrow transfers. The results of the statistical estimations provide strong support for the theory.