Income Inequality, Trade and Financial Openness

Income Inequality, Trade and Financial Openness PDF Author: Guay C. Lim
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780734043467
Category : Free trade
Languages : en
Pages : 31

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Income Inequality, Trade and Financial Openness

Income Inequality, Trade and Financial Openness PDF Author: Guay C. Lim
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780734043467
Category : Free trade
Languages : en
Pages : 31

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Book Description


Capital Openness and Income Inequality

Capital Openness and Income Inequality PDF Author: Guillermo Lagarda
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 30

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Book Description
Recently, capital controls have made a comeback as both policymakers and academia have questioned the net benefits of liberalization and economic growth, especially after the 2008 Great Recession. While that literature has largely concluded that capital account liberalization may have detrimental effects on growth and accentuate financial instability in emerging markets, relatively little literature has examined the impacts of capital account liberalization on income inequality. Thus, this paper investigates the extent to which liberalization is beneficial for countries, conditional on institutional strength and financial depth. We specifically explore the differential impacts of capital account liberalization on income inequality during periods of economic expansion and contraction. The main findings suggest that the net impact of financial liberalization on income inequality is ambiguous during periods of economic expansion but detrimental during contractions. However, we also find that capital account openness needs not to be detrimental on income inequality if institutions are strong or - as it is the case in Latin America - if social safety nets are available.

Capital Account Liberalization and Inequality

Capital Account Liberalization and Inequality PDF Author: Davide Furceri
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1513531409
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 26

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Book Description
This paper examines the distributional impact of capital account liberalization. Using panel data for 149 countries from 1970 to 2010, we find that, on average, capital account liberalization reforms increase inequality and reduce the labor share of income in the short and medium term. We also find that the level of financial development and the occurrence of crises play a key role in shaping the response of inequality to capital account liberalization reforms.

Causes and Consequences of Income Inequality

Causes and Consequences of Income Inequality PDF Author: Ms.Era Dabla-Norris
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1513547437
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 39

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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.

Rising Income Inequality

Rising Income Inequality PDF Author: Chris Papageorgiou
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 42

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Book Description
We examine the relationship between trade and financial globalization and the rise in inequality in most countries in recent decades. We find technological progress as having a greater impact than globalization on inequality. The limited overall impact of globalization reflects two offsetting tendencies: whereas trade globalization is associated with a reduction in inequality, financial globalization-and foreign direct investment in particular-is associated with an increase. A key finding is that both globalization and technological changes increase the returns on human capital, underscoring the importance of education and training in both developed and developing countries in addressing rising inequality.

Financial Development, Inequality and Poverty

Financial Development, Inequality and Poverty PDF Author: Mr.Sami Ben Naceur
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1498359655
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 28

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Book Description
This paper provides evidence on the link between financial development and income distribution. Several dimensions of financial development are considered: financial access, efficiency, stability, and liberalization. Each aspect is represented by two indicators: one related to financial institutions, and the other to financial markets. Using a sample of 143 countries from 1961 to 2011, the paper finds that four of the five dimensions of financial development can significantly reduce income inequality and poverty, except financial liberalization, which tends to exacerbate them. Also, banking sector development tends to provide a more significant impact on changing income distribution than stock market development. Together, these findings are consistent with the view that macroeconomic stability and reforms that strengthen creditor rights, contract enforcement, and financial institution regulation are needed to ensure that financial development and liberalization fully support the reduction of poverty and income equality.

Growth Divergence and Income Inequality in OECD Countries

Growth Divergence and Income Inequality in OECD Countries PDF Author: Enrico D'Elia
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 28

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Book Description
This paper analyzes trade and financial openness effects on growth and income inequality in 35 OECD countries. Our model takes into account both short run and long run effects of factors explaining income divergence between and within the countries. We estimate, for the period 1995-2016, an error correction model in which per capita GDP and inequality are driven by changes over time of selected factors and by the deviation from a long run relationship. Stylised facts suggest that trade and financial openness reduce the growth gaps across the countries but not income inequality, and the effects of finance are stronger in high income countries. Nevertheless, low and middle income countries benefit more from international trade. Our contribution to the existing literature is threefold: i) we study the short and long run effects of trade and financial openness on income level and distribution, ii) we focus on developed countries (OECD) rather than on developing and iii) we provide a sensitivity analysis including in our baseline equation an institutional indicator, a trade agreement proxy and a dummy of global financial crisis. Estimates results indicate that trade openness significantly improved the conditions of OECD low income countries both in short and long run mostly, consistently with the catching up theory. It also decreased inequality, but only in low and middle income countries. Differently financial openness had a positive and significant impact only in the short run on middle income countries and increased income disparities within countries in the short term in low income countries and in the long term in high income countries.

Financial Globalization and Inequality: Capital Flows as a Two-Edged Sword

Financial Globalization and Inequality: Capital Flows as a Two-Edged Sword PDF Author: Mr.Barry J. Eichengreen
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1513566385
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 37

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Book Description
We review the debate on the association of financial globalization with inequality. We show that the within-country distributional impact of capital account liberalization is context specific and that different types of flows have different distributional effects. Their overall impact depends on the composition of capital flows, their interaction, and on broader economic and institutional conditions. A comprehensive set of policies – macroeconomic, financial and labor- and product-market specific – is important for facilitating wider sharing of the benefits of financial globalization.

Capital Account Liberalization and Wage Inequality: Evidence from Firm Level Data

Capital Account Liberalization and Wage Inequality: Evidence from Firm Level Data PDF Author: Kodjovi M. Eklou
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 35

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Book Description
Firms play an important role in shaping income inequality at the aggregated country level, given that wages represent a significant proportion of household income. We investigate the distributional consequences of capital account liberalization, relying on firm level data to explore the implications for betweenfirms earning inequality in ASEAN5 countries over the period 1995-2019. We find that between-firms wage dispersion alone, accounts for a nontrivial proportion of the variation in the market Gini. Our empirical findings show that capital account liberalization increases between-firms wage inequality, as wages grow faster at initially high-paying firms and slow-down at firms at the lower portion of the wage distribution. These results are robust to a battery of robustness checks. Further, the directions and categories of capital account liberalization matter as results are pronounced for inflow liberalization and equity capital flows. We also show that capital account liberalization induces an increase in Profit-to-Wage ratios. Furthermore, the impact depends on country characteristics (wage setting institutions, the level of financial development and the size of the informal sector) as well as industry characteristics (export orientation and external finance dependence).

Democracy and Income Inequality

Democracy and Income Inequality PDF Author: Branko Milanovic
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Ideology, as proxied by a country's dominant religion, seems to be related to inequality. In Judeo-Christian societies increased democratization appears to lead to lower inequality; in Muslim and Confucian societies it has an insignificant effect. One reason for this difference may be that Muslim and Confucian societies rely on informal transfers to reach the desired level of inequality, while Judeo-Christian societies, where family ties are weaker, use political action. Standard political economy theories suggest that democratization has a moderating effect on income inequality. But the empirical literature has failed to uncover any such robust relationship. Gradstein, Milanovic, and Ying take another look at the issue. The authors argue that prevailing ideology may be an important determinant of inequality and that the democratization effect "works through" ideology. In societies that value equality highly there is less distributional conflict among income groups, so democratization may have only a negligible effect on inequality. But in societies that value equality less, democratization reduces inequality through redistribution as the poor outvote the rich. The authors' cross-country empirical analysis, covering 126 countries in 1960-98, confirms the hypothesis: ideology, as proxied by a country's dominant religion, seems to be related to inequality. In addition, while in Judeo-Christian societies increased democratization appears to lead to lower inequality, in Muslim and Confucian societies it has an insignificant effect. The authors hypothesize that Muslim and Confucian societies rely on informal transfers to reach the desired level of inequality, while Judeo-Christian societies, where family ties are weaker, use political action. This paper - a product of Poverty and Human Resources, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to study inequality and income redistribution. The study was funded by the Bank's Research Support Budget under the research projects "Democracy, Redistribution, and Inequality" (RPO 683-01) and "Deriving World Income Distribution in 1988 and 1993" (RPO 683-68).