Teoria economica, scelte legislative e giustizia distributiva

The paper examines how changes in legislation can affect income distribution. It proposes as an example how the evolution of financial regulation in USA influenced the distribution of income by allowing the banking industry to growth at higher rates than the rest of the economy. The increase in the sell of the financial services raised the profits of this sector and generated an intense struggle on the distribution of income to the other sectors or groups of the economy. At turn, the higher profits earned by the banking sector allowed it to increase its influence on the social, cultural and political life, thus introducing laws that further favoured the earnings of this sector. The consequence of this concentration of power has however been an increase in the systemic risk, which has produced in the end the financial crisis of 2007-2008. The paper also shows that the crisis has not reduced the power enjoyed by the banking sector, which has still been able to influence the reforms of financial regulation introduced in 2010.