團結真有力，阻礙真有心：探析拉丁美洲不平等、二元化與重分配支出效果

Why do so many Latin American countries fail to address economic disparities, even though the political power of organized labor and the level of social spending in this region is stronger and more generous than its counterparts in the rest of the developing world? My argument starts with the reality characterizing most of developing countries: the large size of the informal sector. Drawing on insider-outsider theory and the Meltzer and Richard model, I argue that formal-sector workers will tend to impede expanding redistributive policies as economic inequality worsens. Labor divide arising from the segmentation between formal-sector and informal-sector workers indicates different preferences for redistributive policies. Moreover, increasing inequality intensifies the conflicting interests because of more redistribution demand from informal-sector workers. In response to the redistributive pressure, labor market insiders may hinder further redistribution because they may suffer from more taxation that is used to finance more redistributive spending. The empirical tests consist of three parts. I first test this argument using time-series-cross-section data covering 15 Latin American countries from 1985 to 2002. The empirical results are robust to a variety of settings, including changing the main independent variable, scope conditions, and model specifications. Furthermore, I also test the observable implications that derive from my argument, seeking to assess if my theory still works after disaggregating redistributive spending and after accounting for the role informal sector plays in moderating my theoretical expectation. Finally, I evaluate causal mechanisms underlying correlation analysis in the previous results by providing three abbreviated cases from secondary sources, as well as quantitative analysis on how inequality mobilizes labor protests and on how labor mobilization, in turn, impedes redistribution. Overall, this thesis contributes to the emerging literature on the impact of working class divide on redistribution in the developing world.