Uneven Development and National Income Inequality in Third World Countries

1983 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerard Sullivan

This article examines the extent to which Third World nations' dependent position in the world economy contributes to intercountry differences in income inequality. International economic dependence is measured using investment dependence — the penetration of a country by foreign capital, commodity production concentration, and the degree to which a country relies on particular markets for its imports and exports. It is hypothesized that the effect of dependency on inequality is mediated by its effect on the uneven development of the productive capacities of a nation. Level of development is included as a control variable in the analysis. The results of a cross-sectional regression analysis indicate that dependency is related to uneven development, which in turn is associated with level of national income inequality.

2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (12) ◽  
pp. 1911-1921 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Sommet ◽  
Davide Morselli ◽  
Dario Spini

Following the status-anxiety hypothesis, the psychological consequences of income inequality should be particularly severe for economically vulnerable individuals. Oddly, however, income inequality is often found to affect vulnerable low-income and advantaged high-income groups equally. We argue that economic vulnerability is better captured by a financial-scarcity measure and hypothesize that income inequality primarily impairs the psychological health of people facing scarcity. First, repeated cross-sectional international data (from the World Values Survey: 146,034 participants; 105 country waves) revealed that the within-country effect of national income inequality on feelings of unhappiness was limited to individuals facing scarcity (≈25% of the World Values Survey population). Second, longitudinal national data (Swiss Household Panel: 14,790 participants; 15,595 municipality years) revealed that the within-life-course effect of local income inequality on psychological health problems was also limited to these individuals (< 10% of the Swiss population). Income inequality by itself may not be a problem for psychological health but, rather, may be a catalyst for the consequences of financial scarcity.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Sommet

Following the “status anxiety hypothesis,” the psychological consequences of income inequality should be particularly severe for economically vulnerable individuals. However, oddly, income inequality is often found to affect vulnerable low-income and advantaged high-income groups equally. We argue that economic vulnerability is better captured by a financial scarcity measure and hypothesize that income inequality primarily impairs the psychological health of people facing scarcity. First, repeated cross-sectional international data (WVS: 146,034 participants; 105 country-waves) revealed that the within-country effect of national income inequality on feelings of unhappiness was limited to individuals facing scarcity (≈ 25% of the WVS population). Second, longitudinal national data (SHP: 14,790 participants; 15,595 municipality-years) revealed that the within-life-course effect of local income inequality on psychological health problems was also limited to these individuals (&lt; 10% of the Swiss population). Income inequality by itself may not be a problem for psychological health but rather a catalyst for the consequences of scarcity.


2021 ◽  
pp. 097639962110106
Author(s):  
Saud Ahmad ◽  
Muhammad Aamir Khan ◽  
Usman Mustafa

In the modern integrated world, the synthesis of countries for trade is often viewed as a crucial source of income and growth disparities across nations. Well-known channels of economic theory can trace the growth effects of trade. However, there is a substantial conflict among empirical studies regarding gains from agricultural trade. Therefore, this study examines the economy-wide impact of agriculture trade liberalization/protection on agriculture production, agriculture trade, income redistribution and public welfare. An extension of the GTAP model known as MyGTAP is employed and the world economy is disaggregated into 20 regions and 11 sectors with Pakistan as a home country. Further, results explore greater gains from an increased level of liberalization towards the agriculture sector in terms of agriculture production, real factors’ wage, terms of trade and household welfare. Rural households enjoy relatively higher real income and income inequality declines in Pakistan in the case of liberalization and protection. However, comparatively protectionism reduces inequality by the lower extent, and said study also points out that neither change in real gross domestic product nor public welfare turns out to be a good indicator of assessing potential impact of trade policies on income inequality.


Author(s):  
Xueli Wei ◽  
Lijing Li ◽  
Fan Zhang

Pumping elephantThe COVID-19 pandemic has adversely affected the lives of people around the world in millions of ways . Due to this severe epidemic, all countries in the world have been affected by all aspects, mainly economic. It is widely discussed that the COVID-19 outbreak has affected the world economy. When considering this dimension, this study aims to examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the world economy, socio-economics, and sustainability. In addition, the research focuses on multiple aspects of social well-being during the pandemic, such as employment, poverty, the status of women, food security, and global trade. To this end, the study used time series and cross-sectional analysis of the data. The second-hand data used in this study comes from the websites of major international organizations. From the analysis of secondary data, the conclusion of this article is that the impact of the pandemic is huge. The main finding of the thesis is that the social economy is affected by the pandemic, causing huge losses in terms of economic well-being and social capital.


2021 ◽  
Vol 72 (5) ◽  
pp. 41-52
Author(s):  
T. Cherkashyna

Using level of income inequality, the clustering of post-communist countries of the Central and Eastern Europe is carried out by the following indicators: Gini index, share in the national income of the second quintile group, share in the national income of the third quintile group, share in the national income of the fourth quintile group, share in the national income of 10% of the poorest, share in the national income of 20% of the richest.,Сluster analysis (k-means method), in the programming environment Statistica is used as analysis tool and five clusters are obtained. The first cluster includes 8 countries (Albania, Hungary, Poland, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Czech Republic, Сroatia, Russia, Slovakia) is characterized by sufficiently low level of income inequality and can be explained by flow of foreign investment and business transnationalization contributing to the increase of incomes of the main population groups of these countries. The second cluster includes 4 countries (Belarus, Slovenia, Ukraine, Moldova) and is characterized by comparatively low level of income inequality, but high level of property inequality due to heredity, аccumulated wealth та concentration of physical and financial capital by so called «oligarchic clans». The third cluster includes 5 countries (Bulgaria, Montenegro, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia) and is characterized by medium level of income inequality. The fourth and fifth clusters include so called «Baltic tigers» (Latvia, Lihuania, Estonia) and is characterized by high level of income inequality as the result of the occurrence of «excess profits» of financial assets owners. In order to decrease the income inequality in the investigated countries, the following measures are proposed: for the countries of the first cluster to accelerate deconcentration of capital ownership by «spaying» (redemption) of privatized enterprises shares by all categories on preferential terms (so called «ESOP programs»); for the countries of the second cluster to implement progressive tax scale where the tax rate for different groups of population vary depending on the income received and citizens with the lowest incomes (at the level of subsistence minimum or minimum wage) do not pay individual taxes at all; for the countries of the third cluster to cope with «shadow» economy and informal unemployment; for the counties of the fourth and fifth clusters to decrease tax burden on private entrepreneurs and thus stimulate self-employment.


2018 ◽  
Vol 59 (8) ◽  
pp. 1630-1666 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathaniel C. Lupton ◽  
Guoliang Frank Jiang ◽  
Luis F. Escobar ◽  
Alfredo Jiménez

We examine the extent to which host country income inequality influences multinational enterprises’ (MNE) expansion strategy for foreign production investment, depending on their specific strategic objectives. Applying a transaction cost framework, we predict that national income inequality has an inverted U-shaped relationship with foreign production investment. As inequality increases, MNEs accrue lower transaction costs arising from interactions with various local actors, leading to higher probability of investment. As income inequality increases further, its effect on location attractiveness will become negative, as its attraction effect is increasingly offset by additional monitoring, bargaining, and security costs owing to the more fractious nature of high inequality societies. In addition, we suggest that the impact of income inequality is contingent on investment objectives: The inverted U-shaped relationship is stronger for efficiency-seeking investment but weaker for market-seeking and competence-enhancing investments. We find substantial support for our hypotheses through an analysis of 27 years (1986-2012) of data on Japanese MNEs’ overseas production entries.


1992 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Fiala

The primary goal of the present study is to use cross-national data on labor-force structure to examine the manner in which the international system shapes the character of national development, and the consequences of variation in development strategy for the growth and distribution of national income. A complementary goal is to illustrate the use of residual plots to overcome the “black box” character of cross-national studies, and thereby provide a bridge to case-study research. Multivariate analyses and residual plots provide results congruent with both world-political-economy and developmental perspectives, and indicate that the world economy may be used by lesser developed countries to obtain more rapid and equitable economic growth, although this was not a natural outcome of the world economy in the 1960s and 1970s.


Author(s):  
Nathaniel C. Lupton ◽  
Guoliang Frank Jiang ◽  
Luis F. Escobar

This chapter calls for understanding the perspective of multinational enterprises (MNEs) on international differences in income inequality. The authors set a research agenda on how national differences in income inequality influence MNE expansion strategies. Applying a transaction cost framework, both negative and positive economic outcomes of income inequality, from the MNE's perspective, are identified. Low levels of income inequality may deter foreign investment, as MNEs prefer countries where they incur lower levels of transaction costs arising from interactions with various market and non-market actors. However, the positive effect of income inequality on location attractiveness will likely diminish at higher levels of inequality when benefits are increasingly offset by additional monitoring, bargaining and security costs owing to instability and conflict. The chapter further explores the implications for level of MNE equity applied in the choice of entry mode under different levels of income inequality.


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