Inflation and Income Distribution: Further Evidenceon Empirical Links

Ales Bulir and Anne Gulde

No 1995/086, IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund

Abstract: This paper examines the effects of inflation and associated financial instability on income distribution. Using both pooled cross country and single country time series models, the level of inflation, inflation variability, and the variability of the nominal exchange rate are shown to impact negatively on overall income equality. Looking at disaggregate measures of income distribution, the issue as to whether inflation is a progressive or regressive tax is found to be negatively correlated with the level of development and the sophistication of the financial structure. The paper argues that these results point towards financial variables as a partial way of rectifying the generally poor explanatory power of both cross-country and time series models of income distribution.

Keywords: WP; income; Gini coefficient; income share; inflation variability; inflation uncertainty; income change; distribution-inflation link; income quintile; sectoral income; inflation data; family income; quintiles in the United States; income distribution-inflation link; equivalized income; Income distribution; Inflation; Personal income; Consumer price indexes; Purchasing power parity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30
Date: 1995-08-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (38)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=1298 (application/pdf)

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:imf:imfwpa:1995/086

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/pubs/ord_info.htm

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Akshay Modi ().