scholarly journals Does Financial Development Reduce the Poverty Gap?

Author(s):  
Jakob de Haan ◽  
Regina Pleninger ◽  
Jan-Egbert Sturm

AbstractFinancial development may affect poverty directly and indirectly through its impact on income inequality, economic growth, and financial instability. Previous studies do not consider all these channels simultaneously. To proxy financial development, we use the ratio of private credit to GDP or an IMF composite measure. Our preferred measure for poverty is the poverty gap, i.e. the shortfall from the poverty line. Our fixed effects estimation results for an unbalanced panel of 84 countries over the 1975–2014 period suggest that financial development does not have a direct effect on the poverty gap. However, as financial development leads to greater inequality, which, in turn, results in more poverty, financial development has an indirect effect on poverty through this transmission channel. Only if we use poverty lines of $3.20 or $5.50 (instead of $1.90 a day as in our baseline model) to define the poverty gap, we find that economic growth reduces poverty. This implies that in those cases the overall effect of financial development on poverty may be positive or negative, depending on which indirect effect, i.e. that of income inequality or growth, is stronger. Financial instability does not seem to affect the poverty gap. These results are consistent across various robustness checks.

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 1038
Author(s):  
Atta Ullah ◽  
Zhao Kui ◽  
Saif Ullah ◽  
Chen Pinglu ◽  
Saba Khan

This study aims to determine the role of globalization, electronic government, financial development, concerning the moderation of institutional quality in reducing income inequality and poverty in One Belt One Road countries. The electronic government and regional integration of the economies of the One Belt One Road countries has increased globalization and can play a vital role in reducing income inequality and poverty. However, this globalization and digital transformation of government systems can only be beneficial in the presence of good institutional quality. The sample includes 64 One Belt One Road countries from 2003 to 2018. We employed a two-step system generalized method of moment (Sys-GMM) and a robustness check through Driscoll–Kraay standard errors regression. Our findings show that globalization, economic growth, e-government development, government expenditure, and inflation have a statistically significant and negative impact on income inequality and are key to eradicating income inequality and poverty. On the other hand, financial development, gross capital formation, and population size positively influence income inequality, which causes an increase in poverty and income inequality as financial development and population levels increase. Moderating variable institutional quality also positively impacts income inequality, which means that institutional quality in Belt and Road Countries is weak, as they are mostly developing countries that need to improve their systems. Moreover, the marginal effect also revealed that institutional quality has a corrective effect on the factors’ relationship with income inequality. Our findings endorse and conclude that globalization and e-government development improve economic growth and eradicate poverty and income inequality by boosting digitalization, investments, job creation, and wage increases for semi-skilled and unskilled human capital in Belt and Road countries. The sustainable utilization of financial and institutional resources plays a vital role in reducing income inequality and poverty in Belt and Road countries.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 75
Author(s):  
Nia Putri Kunanti ◽  
Melti Roza Adry

This study aims to determine how the influence of financial development on economic growth in Indonesia. Financial development indicators are M2 money supply, bank assets, private credit and trade openness. Where inflation and trade openness as a control variable and economic growth as the dependent variable. The data used in this study are secondary data from 2005 quarter 1 to 2018 quarter 4 which were collected through documentation and related agencies. This study uses multiple linear regression analysis and error correction models. The results of this study indicate that: (1) the money supply M2 has a negative effect on economic growth in Indonesia; (2) Bank assets have a negative effect on economic growth in Indonesia; (3) Private credit has a positive effect on economic growth in Indonesia; (4)) trade openness has a positive effect on economic growth in Indonesia.


2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (3(J)) ◽  
pp. 101-112
Author(s):  
Kunofiwa Tsaurai

Recent studies which investigated the determinants of foreign direct investment (FDI) in BRICS include Hsin-Hong and Shou-Ronne (2012), Nandi (2012), Jadhav (2012), Darzini and Amirmojahedi (2013), Nischith (2013), Ho et al. (2013), Kaur et al. (2013) and Priya and Archana (2014). The findings from these studies shows lack of consensus and confirm that a list of agreeable determinants of FDI in BRICS countries is still an unsettled matter. This paper was therefore initiated in order to contribute to the debate on the discourse on FDI determinants in BRICS countries.This paper deviates from earlier similar studies in five ways: (1) uses most recent data, (2) is the first to investigate whether a combination of financial development, trade openness, human capital, economic growth and inflation influence FDI in BRICS countries, (3) uses different proxies of the variables that affect FDI, (4) employed both fixed effects and pooled ordinary least squares (OLS) approaches and (5) used a stacked data approach.The results of the study showed that economic growth, trade openness and exchange rate stability positively impacted on FDI, financial development positively influenced FDI under fixed effects, FDI was positively influenced by human capital development using the pooled OLS and inflation negatively affected FDI in line with literature. Taking into account these findings, this study urges BRICS to implement policies that increase financial sector efficiency and economic growth, maintain stable exchange rates, keep inflation rates at lower levels, enhance trade openness and human capital development in order to increase FDI inflows.


2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 480-497 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chunlai Chen

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyse the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on urban-rural income inequality in China. Design/methodology/approach This study uses the provincial-level panel data and employs the fixed-effects instrumental variable regression technique to investigate empirically the impact of FDI on urban-rural income inequality in China. Findings The study finds that while FDI has directly contributed to reducing urban-rural income inequality through employment creation, knowledge spillovers and contribution to economic growth, FDI has also contributed to increasing urban-rural income inequality through international trade. Practical implications The study has some policy implications. First, as the study finds that FDI not only contributes to reducing urban-rural income inequality through employment creation, knowledge spillovers and contribution to economic growth, but also contributes to increasing urban-rural income inequality through international trade, therefore, apart from improving local economic and technological conditions to attract more FDI inflows, China should re-design FDI policies by shifting away from encouraging export-oriented FDI to encouraging FDI flows into the industries and sectors in line with China’s overall economic structural adjustments and industrial upgrading. Second, policies should focus on increasing investment in infrastructure development and in public education, which not only can reduce urban-rural income inequality but also can attract more FDI inflows. And finally policies should be designed to accelerate urbanisation development by focusing on urban-rural integrated development, household registration system reform and proper settlement of rural migrants in urban areas, thus reducing urban-rural income inequality. Originality/value The paper makes two major contributions to the literature. First, the paper adopts the fixed-effects instrumental variable regression technique to deal with the endogeneity issues in estimating the impact of FDI on urban-rural income inequality, producing more consistent estimates. Second, the paper investigates not only the direct impact of FDI on urban-rural income inequality through the effects of employment creation, knowledge spillovers and contribution to economic growth, but also the indirect impact of FDI on urban-rural income inequality through its activities in international trade, adding new empirical evidence to the sparse literature on the impact of FDI on income inequality in China.


2017 ◽  
Vol 62 (02) ◽  
pp. 509-530 ◽  
Author(s):  
AZFAR HILMI BAHARUDIN ◽  
YAP SU FEI

This paper is an empirical investigation on economic growth for Malaysia, with focus on income inequality, foreign direct investment (FDI), financial development and trade. Co-integrating regression procedures namely, fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS), canonical co-integrating regression (CCR) and dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS) were employed. Positive relationship between growth with financial development and trade are found to be consistent across all estimations. Income inequality on the other hand though negative, does not seem to exhibit robust significant statistical relationship with growth. The orders of integration for variables used have been demonstrated to be governed such that a long-run relationship prevails.


Author(s):  
Adel Bogari

The purpose of this paper is to assess the effects of the financial development and the financial institutions quality on the economic growth for the Saudi Arabia. Using generalized Method of Moments (GMM) with a dynamic panel framework, this paper employs different measures of financial development namely the Liquid liabilities (LIQ), Private credit by deposit money banks and other financial institutions (CRE) and Central bank assets (ASS), and for financial institutions quality including socioeconomic conditions, investment profile, law and order, corruption, external conflicts and democratic accountability. For the period (1990-2017), our findings strongly support the hypothesis that financial development leads to growth in the Saudi Arabia. Moreover, empirical results support a positive and significant relationship observed between financial institutions quality and growth. The findings of this paper suggest the need to give more support to the financial development for Saudi Arabia banking that have been launched in the country since the last three decades and to improve the role played by the financial institutions to stimulate saving/investment and, consequently, long-term economic growth.  


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kazi Md. Barkat Ali ◽  
◽  
A. B. M Anamul Haque ◽  

The study is based on primary household level data obtained from a survey on income expenditure and poverty measures for 2020-21. The perceptual data were collected through field survey which was based on semi structural questionnaire. Total 162 selected samples were considered and simple random sampling techniques have been adopted during data collection. These factual data were collected from various secondary sources like books, journals, magazines, nationally and internationally published data etc. Human development indicators for 1996 have been compared with the study area (pasture area in SujanagarUpazila, Pabna district, Bangladesh). The empirical result shows the analysis of poverty, income inequality, economic growth & development scenario of pasture area’s in Sujanagarupazila, Pabna district, Bangladesh. The research found that 55% respondents live under the poverty line. The study also examines that these householders play an important contribution to the national GDP but their living level is below than standard one. If these areas’ householders’ development access were more available, they would return a great introduction to the society. This paper advises using anti-poverty policy, the concept of poverty minimizing inequality that the society should be tolerant ofattaining the goal of minimizing poverty. It is useful to differentiate between structural and transient causes of poverty. The provision of public goods plays an imperative role in fighting poverty. The government’s proper planning and initiatives, NGOs and Community based organization’s collaboration help build the study area as a socio-economic and environmentally friendly area in Bangladesh.


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