Income Inequality and Economic Development Incentives in US States: Robin Hood in Reverse?

Jia Wang, Stephen E. Ellis and Cynthia Rogers
Additional contact information
Jia Wang: University of Dayton
Stephen E. Ellis: University of Oklahoma

The Review of Regional Studies, 2018, vol. 48, issue 1, 93-117

Abstract: This paper explores the relationship between the rising use of economic development incentives (EDI) and rising income inequality within U.S. states. It extends the few papers which investigate state and local income inequality outcomes in the U.S. (Goetz et al., 2011; Shuai, 2015) in three important ways. First, it provides a normative argument for reducing inequality as a policy goal, an issue commonly ignored in empirical applications of inequality. Second, it discusses the channels through which EDI policy can influence equality outcomes in a regional context. Finally, it estimates panel data models for 41 states from 2000 to 2009 using direct measures of EDI and three common measures of income inequality: Gini, top 1 percent income share and top 10 percent income share. The results reveal positive and statistically significant relationships between the one-year lag of EDI values and the three inequality measures. Taken as a whole, the results are consistent with a reverse-Robin-Hood effect where more generous EDI use is associated with redistribution of income from the bottom 90 percent to the top 10 percent of the income distribution.

Keywords: economic development incentives; income inequality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H71 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://journal.srsa.org/ojs/index.php/RRS/article/view/1008 To View On Journal Page
http://journal.srsa.org/ojs/index.php/RRS/article/view/1008/857 To Download Article

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rre:publsh:v48:y:2018:i:1:p:93-117

Access Statistics for this article

The Review of Regional Studies is currently edited by Tammy Leonard & Lei Zhang and Lei Zhang

More articles in The Review of Regional Studies from Southern Regional Science Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tammy Leonard & Lei Zhang ().