Does Capital Account Liberalization Affect Income Inequality?
Xiang Li, Dan Su
Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics,
No. 2,
2021
Abstract
By adopting an identification strategy of difference‐in‐difference estimation combined with propensity score matching between liberalized and closed countries, this paper provides robust evidence that opening the capital account is associated with an increase in income inequality in developing countries. Specifically, capital account liberalization, in the long run, is associated with a reduction in the income share of the poorest half by 2.66–3.79% points and an increase in that of the richest 10% by 5.19–8.76% points. Moreover, directions and categories of capital account liberalization matter. The relationship is more pronounced when liberalizing inward and equity capital flows.
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30 Years after Reunification, Gross Domestic Product has Served its Purpose as an Indicator
Oliver Holtemöller
Wirtschaftsdienst,
Konferenzband "30 Jahre Deutsche Einheit", März
2021
Abstract
The comparison of living conditions in East and West Germany is often based on the gross domestic product per inhabitant. However, this measure is not a good welfare indicator in itself. It can be assumed that, measured by the gross domestic product per inhabitant, there will be no further significant equalisation of economic power in East and West Germany in the foreseeable future. This is because the age structure of East Germany, i.e. the ratio of employed persons to inhabitants, is less favourable than in the West. On the other hand, if one looks at important welfare indicators such as consumption opportunities, life expectancy, leisure time and income inequality, living conditions in East and West Germany are more similar than the gross domestic product per inhabitant suggests. In the debates on the catching-up process of East Germany, more emphasis should therefore be placed on labour productivity as a measure of economic strength and on welfare indicators as a measure of the equalisation of living conditions.
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Finance-Growth Nexus and Banking Efficiency: The Impact of Microfinance Institutions
Afsheen Abrar, Iftekhar Hasan, Rezaul Kabir
Journal of Economics and Business,
March-April
2021
Abstract
This paper investigates the relative importance of microfinance institutions (MFIs) at both the macro (financial development, economic growth, income inequality, and poverty) and micro levels (efficiency of traditional commercial banks). We observe a significant impact on most of the fronts. MFIs’ participation increases overall savings (total bank deposits) and credit allocation (loans to private sector) in the economy. Their involvement enhances economic welfare by reducing income inequality and poverty. Additionally, their active presence helps to discipline the traditional commercial banks by subjecting them to more competition triggering higher efficiency.
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Income Inequality and Minority Labor Market Dynamics: Medium Term Effects from the Great Recession
Salvador Contreras, Amit Ghosh, Iftekhar Hasan
Economics Letters,
February
2021
Abstract
Using a difference-in-differences framework we evaluate the effect that exposure to a bank failure in the Great Recession period had on income inequality. We find that it led to a 1% higher Gini, relative rise of 38 cents for high earners, and 7% decline for lowest earners in treated MSAs. Moreover, we show that blacks saw a decline of 10.2%, Hispanics 9.8%, and whites 5.1% in income. Low income blacks and Hispanics drove much of the effect on inequality.
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Growing Income Inequality in the United States and Other Advanced Economies
Florian Hoffmann, David S. Lee, Thomas Lemieux
Journal of Economic Perspectives,
No. 4,
2020
Abstract
This paper studies the contribution of both labor and non-labor income in the growth in income inequality in the United States and large European economies. The paper first shows that the capital to labor income ratio disproportionately increased among high-earnings individuals, further contributing to the growth in overall income inequality. That said, the magnitude of this effect is modest, and the predominant driver of the growth in income inequality in recent decades is the growth in labor earnings inequality. Far more important than the distinction between total income and labor income, is the way in which educational factors account for the growth in US labor and capital income inequality. Growing income gaps among different education groups as well as composition effects linked to a growing fraction of highly educated workers have been driving these effects, with a noticeable role of occupational and locational factors for women. Findings for large European economies indicate that inequality has been growing fast in Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom, though not in France. Capital income and education don't play as much as a role in these countries as in the United States.
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Employment Effects of Introducing a Minimum Wage: The Case of Germany
Oliver Holtemöller, Felix Pohle
Economic Modelling,
July
2020
Abstract
Income inequality has been a major concern of economic policy makers for several years. Can minimum wages help to mitigate inequality? In 2015, the German government introduced a nationwide statutory minimum wage to reduce income inequality by improving the labour income of low-wage employees. However, the employment effects of wage increases depend on time and region specific conditions and, hence, they cannot be known in advance. Because negative employment effects may offset the income gains for low-wage employees, it is important to evaluate minimum-wage policies empirically. We estimate the employment effects of the German minimum-wage introduction using panel regressions on the state-industry-level. We find a robust negative effect of the minimum wage on marginal and a robust positive effect on regular employment. In terms of the number of jobs, our results imply a negative overall effect. Hence, low-wage employees who are still employed are better off at the expense of those who have lost their jobs due to the minimum wage.
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Automation, Globalization and Vanishing Jobs: A Labor Market Sorting View
Ester Faia, Sébastien Laffitte, Maximilian Mayer, Gianmarco Ottaviano
IZA Discussion Paper,
No. 13267,
2020
Abstract
We show, theoretically and empirically, that the effects of technological change associated with automation and offshoring on the labor market can substantially deviate from standard neoclassical conclusions when search frictions hinder efficient assortative matching between firms with heterogeneous tasks and workers with heterogeneous skills. Our key hypothesis is that better matches enjoy a comparative advantage in exploiting automation and a comparative disadvantage in exploiting offshoring. It implies that automation (offshoring) may reduce (raise) employment by lengthening (shortening) unemployment duration due to higher (lower) match selectivity. We find empirical support for this implication in a dataset covering 92 occupations and 16 sectors in 13 European countries from 1995 to 2010.
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Foreign Bank Ownership and Income Inequality: Empirical Evidence
Manthos D. Delis, Iftekhar Hasan, Nikolaos Mylonidis
Applied Economics,
No. 11,
2020
Abstract
Using country-level panel data over 1995–2013 on within-country income inequality and foreign bank presence, this paper establishes a positive relation between the two, running from higher foreign bank presence to income inequality. Given that foreign bank participation increased by 62% over the period 1995 to 2013, our baseline results imply a 5.8% increase in the Gini coefficient on average over this period, ceteris paribus. These results are robust to the inclusion of country and year fixed effects and to the use of restrictions on foreign bank entry in the host countries as an instrumental variable. We show that this positive effect is channelled through the lack of greenfield entry and the associated lower levels of competition.
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HIP, RIP, and the Robustness of Empirical Earnings Processes
Florian Hoffmann
Quantitative Economics,
No. 3,
2019
Abstract
The dispersion of individual returns to experience, often referred to as heterogeneity of income profiles (HIP), is a key parameter in empirical human capital models, in studies of life‐cycle income inequality, and in heterogeneous agent models of life‐cycle labor market dynamics. It is commonly estimated from age variation in the covariance structure of earnings. In this study, I show that this approach is invalid and tends to deliver estimates of HIP that are biased upward. The reason is that any age variation in covariance structures can be rationalized by age‐dependent heteroscedasticity in the distribution of earnings shocks. Once one models such age effects flexibly the remaining identifying variation for HIP is the shape of the tails of lag profiles. Credible estimation of HIP thus imposes strong demands on the data since one requires many earnings observations per individual and a low rate of sample attrition. To investigate empirically whether the bias in estimates of HIP from omitting age effects is quantitatively important, I thus rely on administrative data from Germany on quarterly earnings that follow workers from labor market entry until 27 years into their career. To strengthen external validity, I focus my analysis on an education group that displays a covariance structure with qualitatively similar properties like its North American counterpart. I find that a HIP model with age effects in transitory, persistent and permanent shocks fits the covariance structure almost perfectly and delivers small and insignificant estimates for the HIP component. In sharp contrast, once I estimate a standard HIP model without age‐effects the estimated slope heterogeneity increases by a factor of thirteen and becomes highly significant, with a dramatic deterioration of model fit. I reach the same conclusions from estimating the two models on a different covariance structure and from conducting a Monte Carlo analysis, suggesting that my quantitative results are not an artifact of one particular sample.
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