Taking Down the Wall: Transition and Inequality

This paper investigates the main determinants of income inequality in transition countries during the period 1990–2018. To this end, we address a major methodological challenge that lies at the core of the cross-country literature on income inequality: the potential endogeneity of income growth, whi...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Cevik, Serhan
Other Authors: Correa-Caro, Carolina
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: Washington, D.C. International Monetary Fund 2020
Series:IMF Working Papers
Subjects:
Online Access:
Collection: International Monetary Fund - Collection details see MPG.ReNa
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653 |a Migration 
653 |a Income 
653 |a Public finance & taxation 
653 |a Income distribution 
653 |a Personal income 
653 |a Human Development 
653 |a Fiscal Policy 
653 |a Fiscal policy 
653 |a Aggregate Factor Income Distribution 
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653 |a National accounts 
653 |a National Government Expenditures and Related Policies: General 
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653 |a Macroeconomic Analyses of Economic Development 
653 |a Income Distribution 
653 |a Economic Development: Human Resources 
653 |a Expenditures, Public 
653 |a Macroeconomics 
653 |a Income inequality 
653 |a Public Finance 
653 |a Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement 
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520 |a This paper investigates the main determinants of income inequality in transition countries during the period 1990–2018. To this end, we address a major methodological challenge that lies at the core of the cross-country literature on income inequality: the potential endogeneity of income growth, which is largely ignored by most empirical studies. We adopt a two-pronged empirical strategy by (i) using trading partners’ weighted average real GDP as an instrumental variable (IV), and (ii) estimating the model via the two-stage least squares (2SLS) approach for static models and the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimator for dynamic models. Our empirical findings are consistent with the Kuznets curve that illustrates a nonlinear relationship between income inequality and the level of economic development. We also find that the redistributive impact of fiscal policy is statistically insignificant and taxation and government spending appear to have the opposing effects on income inequality in transition economies