Two empirical essays on macroeconomics and income inequality / Dois ensaios empíricos em macroeconomia e desigualdade de renda
AUTOR(ES)
Ricardo Sabbadini
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO
2010
RESUMO
This dissertation consists of two empirical essays relating macroeconomic variables and income inequality. The aim of the first essay is to evaluate how a change in the inflation rate affects the income distribution. In order to do this, a panel of yearly data for about 80 countries between 1987 and 2006 is used. Then static and dynamic models in which income inequality is explained by inflation are estimated, always controlling for country and year fixed effects. A robust positive relation between the variables is found when non linear models are used to reduce the influence of outliers. This is evidence that inflation has a positive effect in the Gini index. The size of the estimated effect, however, is inferior to those obtained by previous studies. Results point that a an increase in the CPI from zero to 10 yearly percentage points would increase the Gini index in at most 0,05 percentage points, on a scale that lies in between zero and 100. Such a difference seems to derive from the use of fixed effects estimators, while previous work was based in cross section data. The second essay suggests that the impact of democratization in economic growth depends negatively on the countrys income inequality. This means that democratization might encourage growth in more equal countries, but this effect diminishes in more unequal societies. In order to empirically assess this argument, I use a panel with 76 countries and five-year averages between 1977 and 2006 and estimate static and dynamic models that also control for country and time fixed effects. In these models, per capita GDP is explained by a variable that measures quality of democratic institutions and its interaction with the Gini index, so that democracys marginal effect depends on the latter. Coefficients have the expected signs in all estimated models. The most robust result is that for highly unequal countries (those that belong to the highest quartile in the sample, with Gini index above 45 percentage points) democratization has a negative impact on economic growth.
ASSUNTO(S)
economic development desenvolvimento econômico inflação income inequality democracy inflation desigualdade de renda democracia
