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Corresponding Author:
Bernard Njindan Iyke, Deakin University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Coauthors:
Sin-Yu HO, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa

Income Inequality and Growth: New Insights from Italy

Volume 70 - Issue 4, October 2017
(pp. 419-442)
JEL classification: D63, O15, O47, O52
Keywords: Income Inequality, Economic Growth, Italy

Abstract

This paper investigates the impact of income inequality on economic growth in Italy during the period of 1967 to 2012. Specifically, using a technique that allows us to sort out long-run impacts from short-run impacts, we investigate whether income inequality benefits or harms growth, after controlling for human capital, labour, physical capital and inflation within an augmented growth model. Amid the existing debatable theoretical and empirical studies, our results suggest that income inequality has a negative and significant impact on growth in the long run. The negative impact of income inequality on growth still exists in the short run. However, the coefficient becomes insignificant. Overall, we gather that inequality hurts growth in the country. Based on this finding, we provide some policy implications.


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Institute for International Economics
of the Genoa Chamber of Commerce


Istituto di Economia Internazionale
Camera di Commercio di Genova
Via Garibaldi, 4 (III piano) - 16124 Genova (Italy)
www.ge.camcom.gov.it