Author: David Pothier
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1498300987
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 50
Get Book Here
Book Description
This paper highlights how changes in the composition of demand affect income dispersion in the short run. We first document how the share of aggregate spending dedicated to labour-intensive goods and services shrinks (expands) during downturns (booms), and argue that this contributes to the observed pro-cyclicality of employment and output in labour-intensive industries. Using a two-sector general equilibrium model, we then assess how this demand composition channel influences the cyclical properties of the income distribution. Consistent with empirical evidence, we find income inequality to be countercyclical due to changes in the level of employment and (to a lesser extent) relative factor prices. The model also shows that wealth redistribution policies can potentially involve a trade-off between equality and output, depending on how they affect the composition of aggregate demand.
Author: Ms. Valerie Cerra
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1513572660
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 54
Get Book Here
Book Description
Is there a tradeoff between raising growth and reducing inequality and poverty? This paper reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on the complex links between growth, inequality, and poverty, with causation going in both directions. The evidence suggests that growth can be effective in reducing poverty, but its impact on inequality is ambiguous and depends on the underlying sources of growth. The impact of poverty and inequality on growth is likewise ambiguous, as several channels mediate the relationship. But most plausible mechanisms suggest that poverty and inequality reduce growth, at least in the long run. Policies play a role in shaping these relationships and those designed to improve equality of opportunity can simultaneously improve inclusiveness and growth.
Author: Ms.Era Dabla-Norris
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1513547437
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 39
Get Book Here
Book Description
This paper analyzes the extent of income inequality from a global perspective, its drivers, and what to do about it. The drivers of inequality vary widely amongst countries, with some common drivers being the skill premium associated with technical change and globalization, weakening protection for labor, and lack of financial inclusion in developing countries. We find that increasing the income share of the poor and the middle class actually increases growth while a rising income share of the top 20 percent results in lower growth—that is, when the rich get richer, benefits do not trickle down. This suggests that policies need to be country specific but should focus on raising the income share of the poor, and ensuring there is no hollowing out of the middle class. To tackle inequality, financial inclusion is imperative in emerging and developing countries while in advanced economies, policies should focus on raising human capital and skills and making tax systems more progressive.
Author: Norman Loayza
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN:
Category : Developing countries
Languages : en
Pages : 38
Get Book Here
Book Description
This paper contributes to explain the cross-country heterogeneity of the poverty response to changes in economic growth. It does so by focusing on the structure of output growth. The paper presents a two-sector theoretical model that clarifies the mechanism through which the sectoral composition of growth and associated labor intensity can affect workers' wages and, thus, poverty alleviation. Then in presents cross-country empirical evidence that analyzes first, the differential poverty-reducing impact of sectoral growth at various levels of disaggregation, and the role of unskilled labor intensity in such differential impact. The paper finds evidence that not only the size of economic growth but also its composition matters for poverty alleviation, with the largest contributuons from labor-intensive sectors (such as agriculture, construction, and manufacturing). The results are robust to the influence of outliers, alternative explanations, and various poverty measures.
Author: Giuseppe Bertola
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691164592
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 439
Get Book Here
Book Description
This book looks at the distribution of income and wealth and the effects that this has on the macroeconomy, and vice versa. Is a more equal distribution of income beneficial or harmful for macroeconomic growth, and how does the distribution of wealth evolve in a market economy? Taking stock of results and methods developed in the context of the 1990s revival of growth theory, the authors focus on capital accumulation and long-run growth. They show how rigorous, optimization-based technical tools can be applied, beyond the representative-agent framework of analysis, to account for realistic market imperfections and for political-economic interactions. The treatment is thorough, yet accessible to students and nonspecialist economists, and it offers specialist readers a wide-ranging and innovative treatment of an increasingly important research field. The book follows a single analytical thread through a series of different growth models, allowing readers to appreciate their structure and crucial assumptions. This is particularly useful at a time when the literature on income distribution and growth has developed quickly and in several different directions, becoming difficult to overview.
Author: Nanak Kakwani
Publisher: New York : Published for the World Bank [by] Oxford University Press
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 436
Get Book Here
Book Description
Deals with income distribution methods and their economic applications.
Author: Engelbert Stockhammer
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137357932
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 329
Get Book Here
Book Description
This volume seeks to go beyond the microeconomic view of wages as a cost having negative consequences on a given firm, to consider the positive macroeconomic dynamics associated with wages as a major component of aggregate demand.
Author: Theo S. Eicher
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262050692
Category : Economic development
Languages : en
Pages : 343
Get Book Here
Book Description
Essays exploring the relationship between economic growth and inequality and the implications for policy makers.
Author: Janet C. Gornick
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804786755
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 541
Get Book Here
Book Description
This state-of-the-art volume presents comparative, empirical research on a topic that has long preoccupied scholars, politicians, and everyday citizens: economic inequality. While income and wealth inequality across all populations is the primary focus, the contributions to this book pay special attention to the middle class, a segment often not addressed in inequality literature. Written by leading scholars in the field of economic inequality, all 17 chapters draw on microdata from the databases of LIS, an esteemed cross-national data center based in Luxembourg. Using LIS data to structure a comparative approach, the contributors paint a complex portrait of inequality across affluent countries at the beginning of the 21st century. The volume also trail-blazes new research into inequality in countries newly entering the LIS databases, including Japan, Iceland, India, and South Africa.
Author: Mr.Sanjeev Gupta
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1451849842
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 42
Get Book Here
Book Description
This paper demonstrates that high and rising corruption increases income inequality and poverty by reducing economic growth, the progressivity of the tax system, the level and effectiveness of social spending, and the formation of human capital, and by perpetuating an unequal distribution of asset ownership and unequal access to education. These findings hold for countries with different growth experiences, at different stages of development, and using various indices of corruption. An important implication of these results is that policies that reduce corruption will also lower income inequality and poverty.
