income inequality

This paper examines the impact of globalization on income inequality in a panel of 78 developed and developing countries over 2002–2015. Moreover, the indirect effect of financial development in the link between globalization and income inequality is also analyzed by incorporating the interaction term between globalization and financial development. The empirical evidence based on the first-difference generalized method of moments (difference GMM) estimator suggested by Arellano and Bond (1991) and the system GMM estimator proposed by Arellano and Bover (1995) shows that globalization tends to worsen income inequality. However, the magnitude of the impact of globalization on income inequality is decreased with higher levels of financial development. These findings suggest that a higher level of financial development results in equal income distribution in a globalized world. As a policy implication, policymakers should improve the level of financial development to mitigate the adverse effects of globalization on income distribution.

This paper investigates causal relations between economic growth, income inequality, and transmission channels during the period 1972 to 2016. These channels include saving rate, investment rate, redistribution policies, human capital, and conspicuous consumption. There is no strong evidence that supports uni-directional or bi-directional causality. In addition, some of the transmission channels lead to improvement of economic growth and equality simultaneously. It concludes that the rapid economic growth and the income inequality alleviation are not necessary conflicting objectives. Hence, strategy of “Redistribution with growth” is a more effective and perhaps politically more acceptable approach than “growth before redistribution” or “redistribution before growth” strategies.

Income inequality has gained prominence by exacerbating the economic stability of both developed and developing countries over the past few decades. The intensity of this issue is non-trivial with economies witnessing failure in policies, indecorous economic governance, and the challenging economic ideologies. Impact of financial development on economic growth is an important channel in economic issues on which plenty of discussions and challenges have arisen. Financial development involves various dimensions of financial systems and markets. Islamic financial development (IFD) is one of these dimensions. This research investigates the impact of IFD on income inequality in 28 countries active in the IFD area, including 14 high-income and 14 middle-income and low-income countries, over 2013-2017 by considering the Kuznets curve hypothesis, financial curve hypothesis, and Kuznets financial hypothesis and through spatial econometrics technique. Results indicate that Islamic financial development (IFD) decreases income inequality. In addition, the findings of the study reveal that there is no clear-cut evidence to support the proposition of economic development along with financial growth, which would reduce the problem of income inequality. The results show that the GDP per capita, Inflation and Trade Openness increase the income inequality. In contrast, General government final consumption expenditure, urban population and age dependency ratio, help countries reduce income inequality.

Income distribution and environmental destruction represent two of the most important goals in the Sustainable Development Goals. However, the linkage between income inequality and carbon emissions remains controversial especially in countries with natural oil and gas resources. This paper studies the link between carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and income inequality in Iran over 1985–2020. The modelling results indicate that there is a trade-off between income inequality and CO2 emissions. By applying the Vector Auto regression approach found a direct relationship between Gini coefficient and CO2 emissions and indirect relationship between petrol price and CO2 emissions. Petrol price have a smaller although negative impact on CO2 emissions compared to the positive effect of inequality. To investigate the effect of shocks, Impulse response checked out. According to the variance decomposition, income inequality after carbon dioxide emissions is the most explanatory change in gas emissions among other variables. This paper presents a positive effect of petrol price shocks on carbon dioxide emissions, and also negative effect on carbon dioxide emissions in long term.