Economic Growth and Inequality
30 Aug 2010-
About: The article was published on 2010-08-30 and is currently open access. It has received 26 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Income inequality metrics & Income distribution.
Citations
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TL;DR: The Granger casualty test confirms a two-way causal relationship between economic growth and carbon emission, globalization and environmental degradation, globalization in the presence of energy and renewable energy consumption,Economic growth and renewableenergy consumption, and between financial development and energy consumption.
Abstract: Global warming and greenhouse gas emissions have become a severe threat to our ecosystem. Prior studies on environment posit that ample exhaustion of fossil fuels for energy is one of the fundamental causes of environmental degradation and naturally replenished energy sources are affordable over fossil fuels. This study set out to examine the role of financial sectors and globalization (in the presence of energy and renewable energy consumption) for a sustainable environment in the panel of Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries in One Belt and One Road initiative perspective. The current study uses annual data of 16 CEE countries covering the period of 1980 to 2016. After confirmation of cross-sectional dependency and co-integration among variables, we applied the Dynamic Seemingly Unrelated Regression and Dumitrescu–Hurlin causality approach for long-run estimations and to check the causal relationship, respectively. The empirical findings of the study certify the existence of an environmental Kuznets curve for the selected panel countries. Globalization is enhancing the environmental quality of the CEE economies. It is important to note that energy consumption and renewable energy consumption have a positive and statistically significant whack on carbon emission. In addition, we do not find a significant link between financial development and carbon emission. Granger casualty test confirms a two-way causal relationship between economic growth and carbon emission, globalization and environmental degradation, globalization and renewable energy consumption, economic growth and renewable energy consumption, and between financial development and energy consumption. Moreover, we found one-way causality from energy consumption (renewable and non-renewable) to carbon emissions. Based on the findings, a number of appropriate policy suggestions are presented in the perspective of Central and Eastern European Countries.
64 citations
Cites background from "Economic Growth and Inequality"
...A pioneering study by Kuznets (1955) theorizes that initially, economic growth makes the environment degrade, but when the per capita income crosses the threshold level (turning point), it improves the environmental quality....
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TL;DR: The role of good governance and institutions in supporting growth and broadening inclusiveness with special reference to developing Asia is discussed in this article, where the authors argue that given its intrinsic value and positive association with the level of development, good governance should be pursued in all dimensions as a basic development goal.
Abstract: This paper looks at the role of governance and institutions in supporting growth and broadening inclusiveness with special reference to developing Asia. While the intrinsic value of good governance and institutions as ends of development in their own right is now universally accepted and underlies the very notion of inclusiveness, their instrumental value as a means toward better growth performance and more equal income distribution is still not well understood – despite the emergence of a large literature. This paper provides a review of this still growing literature, and, in the process, takes a close look at two critical issues that have attracted a great deal of attention: the measurement of governance and institutional quality, and direction of causality between institutional development and economic development. The paper then examines where developing Asia stands in various widely used measures of governance/institutional quality relative to the rest of the world, and the power of governance indicators in explaining cross-country variations in growth performance and income inequality in the region. The paper argues that given its intrinsic value and positive association with the level of development, good governance should be pursued in all dimensions as a basic development goal. To maximize its instrumental value, the current literature points to the need for recognizing the context-specific nature of the linkages between governance and institutional quality, on one hand, and growth and inequality, on the other, and for focusing on the aspects that are most binding and critical to a country’s development in a particular period. The empirical analysis shows that developing Asian economies with government effectiveness, regulatory quality, and rule of law scoring above the global means (after controlling for per capita income) in 1998 grew faster on average during 1998- 2008 (by 1.6, 2.0, and 1.2 percentage points annually, respectively) than those economies scoring below the global means. On the basis of these findings, the paper argues that improving governance in these dimensions could be used as potential entry points of development strategies for many countries in the region. The paper also highlights the need for more efforts to improve the measurement of governance and institutional quality and more research to better understand the complex relationships between institutional quality and economic development.
62 citations
Cites methods from "Economic Growth and Inequality"
...This relationship has been extensively studied, beginning with work spawned by Simon Kuznets’s (1955) well-known “inverted-U” hypothesis that economic growth first causes increasing, then decreasing, inequality....
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Posted Content•
TL;DR: The authors reviewed various issues linked to the rise in inequality observed in a number of countries, particularly developed countries, over the past quarter century and concluded that changes in inequality appear to be very country-specific.
Abstract: This article reviews various issues linked to the rise in inequality observed in a number of countries, particularly developed countries, over the past quarter century. Various sources of evidence regarding the time profile of inequality are examined and do not always fit the common view that inequality is trending upward everywhere. Overall, changes in inequality appear to be very country-specific. The same conclusion does obtain when examining the causes of these changes. There is little doubt that there are common forces affecting the distribution of income in most countries, but idiosyncratic factors have enhanced their effects in some cases and offset them in others. Country specificity also holds with regard to policies aimed at correcting inequality, even though globalization imposes constraints on some key redistribution instruments like taxation and the regulation of financial markets. International coordination and, in particular, more transparency in cross-border financial operations are needed for governments to recover some autonomy in these matters.
54 citations
Cites background from "Economic Growth and Inequality"
...WP654 World changes in inequality: an overview of facts, causes, consequences and policies 21 In the case of developing another key structural factor potentially responsible for distributional changes is the evolution of the sectoral structure of the economy over the development process, as famously emphasised by Kuznets (1955). Many authors have stressed for instance the importance of changes in the income gap across Chinese, Indian or Brazilian regions as a major factor in the evolution of overall inequality in those emerging countries....
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...We know the former from Kuznets (1953), who found that the Gini coefficient for the United States increased (from 0.22 to 0.39) between 1920 and 1929, while we know the latter from the work of Piketty and Saez (2003)....
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Posted Content•
TL;DR: The impact of malaria on mortality in Africa prior to the period in which formal data were collected is measured, and there is little evidence of a negative relationship between malaria burden and population density or other measures of development.
Abstract: We examine the effect of malaria on economic development in Africa over the very long run. Using data on the prevalence of the mutation that causes sickle cell disease we measure the impact of malaria on mortality in Africa prior to the period in which formal data were collected. Our estimate is that in the more afflicted regions, malaria lowered the probability of surviving to adulthood by about ten percentage points, which is roughly twice the current burden of the disease. The reduction in malaria mortality has been roughly equal to the reduction in other causes of mortality. We then ask whether the estimated burden of malaria had an effect on economic development in the period before European contact. Examining both mortality and morbidity, we do not find evidence that the impact of malaria would have been very significant. These model-based findings are corroborated by a more statistically-based approach, which shows little evidence of a negative relationship between malaria ecology and population density or other measures of development, using data measured at the level ethnic groups.
27 citations
Cites background from "Economic Growth and Inequality"
...Land quality is the mean value of the index of land suitability for agriculture from Ramankutty et al. (2002) and represents the probability that a particular grid cell (of the size of about 50 9 50 kilometres) may be cultivated....
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...Geographic controls are mean value of the index of land suitability for agriculture (Ramankutty et al., 2002), ecological diversity (Fenske, 2014) and mean elevation of terrain....
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Posted Content•
04 Dec 2013TL;DR: This article examined the effect of genetic diversity on economic development in the United States and found that increases in genetic diversity of US counties that arose due to immigration during the 19th century had a significant positive effect on US counties' economic development.
Abstract: We examine the effect of genetic diversity on economic development in the United States. Our estimation strategy exploits that immigrants from different countries of origin differed in their genetic diversity and that these immigrants settled in different regions. Based on a sample of over 2250 counties, we find that increases in genetic diversity of US counties that arose due to immigration during the 19th century had a significant positive effect on US counties' economic development. We also detect a significant positive long-run effect of 19th century immigrants' genetic diversity on contemporaneous measures of income.
15 citations
Cites methods from "Economic Growth and Inequality"
...Compared to the 1870 Census, digitized records for the years 1850 and 1860 are only available as a 1 percent random sample from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS), see Ruggles et al. (2010)....
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...Compared to the 1870 Census, digitized records for the years 1850 and 1860 are only available as a 1 percent random sample from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS), see Ruggles et al. (2010). (5)As Goldin (1994, page 223) notes: "With the passage of the Emergency Quota in May 1921 the era of open immigration to the United States came to an abrupt end....
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References
More filters
TL;DR: The Granger casualty test confirms a two-way causal relationship between economic growth and carbon emission, globalization and environmental degradation, globalization in the presence of energy and renewable energy consumption,Economic growth and renewableenergy consumption, and between financial development and energy consumption.
Abstract: Global warming and greenhouse gas emissions have become a severe threat to our ecosystem. Prior studies on environment posit that ample exhaustion of fossil fuels for energy is one of the fundamental causes of environmental degradation and naturally replenished energy sources are affordable over fossil fuels. This study set out to examine the role of financial sectors and globalization (in the presence of energy and renewable energy consumption) for a sustainable environment in the panel of Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries in One Belt and One Road initiative perspective. The current study uses annual data of 16 CEE countries covering the period of 1980 to 2016. After confirmation of cross-sectional dependency and co-integration among variables, we applied the Dynamic Seemingly Unrelated Regression and Dumitrescu–Hurlin causality approach for long-run estimations and to check the causal relationship, respectively. The empirical findings of the study certify the existence of an environmental Kuznets curve for the selected panel countries. Globalization is enhancing the environmental quality of the CEE economies. It is important to note that energy consumption and renewable energy consumption have a positive and statistically significant whack on carbon emission. In addition, we do not find a significant link between financial development and carbon emission. Granger casualty test confirms a two-way causal relationship between economic growth and carbon emission, globalization and environmental degradation, globalization and renewable energy consumption, economic growth and renewable energy consumption, and between financial development and energy consumption. Moreover, we found one-way causality from energy consumption (renewable and non-renewable) to carbon emissions. Based on the findings, a number of appropriate policy suggestions are presented in the perspective of Central and Eastern European Countries.
64 citations
Posted Content•
TL;DR: The authors reviewed various issues linked to the rise in inequality observed in a number of countries, particularly developed countries, over the past quarter century and concluded that changes in inequality appear to be very country-specific.
Abstract: This article reviews various issues linked to the rise in inequality observed in a number of countries, particularly developed countries, over the past quarter century. Various sources of evidence regarding the time profile of inequality are examined and do not always fit the common view that inequality is trending upward everywhere. Overall, changes in inequality appear to be very country-specific. The same conclusion does obtain when examining the causes of these changes. There is little doubt that there are common forces affecting the distribution of income in most countries, but idiosyncratic factors have enhanced their effects in some cases and offset them in others. Country specificity also holds with regard to policies aimed at correcting inequality, even though globalization imposes constraints on some key redistribution instruments like taxation and the regulation of financial markets. International coordination and, in particular, more transparency in cross-border financial operations are needed for governments to recover some autonomy in these matters.
54 citations
Posted Content•
TL;DR: The impact of malaria on mortality in Africa prior to the period in which formal data were collected is measured, and there is little evidence of a negative relationship between malaria burden and population density or other measures of development.
Abstract: We examine the effect of malaria on economic development in Africa over the very long run. Using data on the prevalence of the mutation that causes sickle cell disease we measure the impact of malaria on mortality in Africa prior to the period in which formal data were collected. Our estimate is that in the more afflicted regions, malaria lowered the probability of surviving to adulthood by about ten percentage points, which is roughly twice the current burden of the disease. The reduction in malaria mortality has been roughly equal to the reduction in other causes of mortality. We then ask whether the estimated burden of malaria had an effect on economic development in the period before European contact. Examining both mortality and morbidity, we do not find evidence that the impact of malaria would have been very significant. These model-based findings are corroborated by a more statistically-based approach, which shows little evidence of a negative relationship between malaria ecology and population density or other measures of development, using data measured at the level ethnic groups.
27 citations
Posted Content•
04 Dec 2013TL;DR: This article examined the effect of genetic diversity on economic development in the United States and found that increases in genetic diversity of US counties that arose due to immigration during the 19th century had a significant positive effect on US counties' economic development.
Abstract: We examine the effect of genetic diversity on economic development in the United States. Our estimation strategy exploits that immigrants from different countries of origin differed in their genetic diversity and that these immigrants settled in different regions. Based on a sample of over 2250 counties, we find that increases in genetic diversity of US counties that arose due to immigration during the 19th century had a significant positive effect on US counties' economic development. We also detect a significant positive long-run effect of 19th century immigrants' genetic diversity on contemporaneous measures of income.
15 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined the mobility of Filipino household income and showed that significant positive and negative mobility exists; albeit, the two tend to offset each other, contributing to slow household income growth at the aggregate level.
Abstract: Despite a more robust economic performance over the past decade compared with the 1980s and 1990s, growth in average household income is still far below what might be expected given the pace of economic expansion in the Philippines. Inequality of household income has also remained high, which leads to the question: is there income mobility in the Philippines? Using longitudinal data from three years of the redesigned Philippine Family Income and Expenditure Survey (2003, 2006, and 2009) and a variety of analytical tools, we examine the mobility of Filipino household income and show that it is less stagnant than is conventionally perceived. Empirical evidence suggests that significant positive and negative mobility exists; albeit, the two tend to offset each other, contributing to slow household income growth at the aggregate level. In addition, there is some evidence that transitory fluctuations contribute significantly to the observed level of income mobility. Overall, the findings are robust across different analytical tools used in measuring income mobility.
13 citations