ESTRATEGIA ROBIN HOOD EN CHILE.

Chile has an unsatisfactory distribution of household income and although its public expenditure (in health, education and housing) and its redistributive policy using direct transfers, have helped reduce poverty; they have not however reduced inequality strongly. The data shows that autonomous household income distribution has improved only marginally after taking into account incomes net of taxes and cash subsidies. With this initial position, the paper determines the impact of the income distribution and the incidence on the economy, which would occur if there was a potential tax increase for households in the richest quintile and a simultaneous transfer of this amount to households in the poorest quintile. This is explored with a computable general equilibrium model using Chilean data, which estimates the direct and indirect effects of this redistribution. It shows that 3.85 points increase in the effective tax rate to the richest quintile raises the income in the poorest quintile at 61.6% and reduces the Gini coefficient from 0.49 to 0.47. However, this kind of strategy to improve equity has important general equilibrium effects, notably a fall in investment and wages according to distinct skill levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]