方法对比

	Meltzer-Richard Model	Spatial Voting Model
领域	Political Economy	Political Science
方法族	MCDM	MCDM
起源年份	1981	1957
提出者	Allan Meltzer & Scott Richard	Harold Hotelling, Duncan Black & Anthony Downs
类型	Formal model of redistribution and government size	Formal model of electoral and legislative choice
开创性文献	Meltzer, A. H., & Richard, S. F. (1981). A Rational Theory of the Size of Government. Journal of Political Economy, 89(5), 914-927.	Downs, A. (1957). An Economic Theory of Democracy. Harper & Row. ISBN: 9780060417505
别名	Meltzer-Richard Hypothesis, Rational Theory of Government Size, Median Voter Theory of Redistribution, MR Model	Spatial Theory of Voting, Downsian Model, Proximity Voting Model, Median Voter Model
相关	4	4
摘要	The Meltzer-Richard model is the canonical political-economy theory of the size of government, developed by Allan Meltzer and Scott Richard in 1981. It embeds the median voter theorem in a fiscal setting: the decisive median voter chooses a single linear (proportional) income tax rate whose revenue funds a uniform lump-sum transfer to everyone. Because income distributions are right-skewed, the median income falls below the mean, so the median voter is a net beneficiary of redistribution and votes for a positive tax. The model's central prediction is that the size of government rises with the ratio of mean to median income — and therefore with inequality — and with any extension of the franchise that lowers the decisive voter's relative income.	The spatial voting model represents voters and political alternatives as points in a common geometric policy space and assumes that each voter supports the alternative nearest to their own ideal point. Rooted in Hotelling's location theory, Duncan Black's 1948 single-peakedness result, and Anthony Downs's 1957 economic theory of democracy, the model yields two foundational results: the median voter theorem, which identifies the equilibrium policy in one dimension, and the Downsian prediction that two vote-seeking parties converge toward the center. It is the workhorse formalism behind modern empirical estimation of political positions.