Income polarization and economic growth

Michał Brzeziński

No 296, Working Papers from ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality

Abstract: This study examines empirically the impact of income polarization on economic growth in an unbalanced panel of more than 70 countries during the 1960–2005 period. We calculate various polarization indices using existing micro-level datasets, as well as datasets reconstructed from grouped data on income distribution taken from the World Income Inequality Database. The results garnered for our preferred sample of countries suggest that income polarization has a negative impact on growth in the short term, while the impact of income inequality on growth is statistically insignificant. Our results are fairly robust to various model specifications and estimation techniques.

Keywords: economic growth; polarization; inequality; income distribution. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D31 O11 O15 O4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38 pages
Date: 2013-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-fdg and nep-pbe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Income Polarization and Economic Growth (2013)
Working Paper: Income polarization and economic growth (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inq:inqwps:ecineq2013-296

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