Income Inequality and Public Debt: What Can Be Learned from the Lebanese Indebtedness?

Adham Sayed

Business and Economic Research, 2020, vol. 10, issue 4, 83-106

Abstract: This paper examines the impact of domestic public debt on income inequality in Lebanon. The analysis is carried out using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach and Error Correction Model (ECM). The data used covers the period between 1990 and 2015. By applying the bounds test, we indicate that there is the existence of a long-run relationship between our variables. Therefore, in both the short and long run, our results show that the domestic share of public debt has a positive and significant effect on income inequality. Hence, a bigger share of domestic public debt leads to wider income inequality. We also suggest steps that may halt the negative impact of public debt on equality in Lebanon, such as reforming the tax system, restructuring the public debt, and searching for sources other than borrowing to cover the budget deficit.

Keywords: Income inequality; Public debt; Domestic public debt; Economic growth; ARDL (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C22 D33 G01 G38 H6 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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