Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/260073 
Year of Publication: 
2013
Series/Report no.: 
Working Paper No. 2013:15
Publisher: 
Lund University, School of Economics and Management, Department of Economics, Lund
Abstract: 
Governments perpetually align their policies to satisfy shifts in voters' relative demand for economic growth versus social equality. Following such shifts, increases (decreases) in government interventions lower (raise) both inequality and growth. This mechanism generates a positive co-movement between inequality and growth. The pattern is weaker in countries where a culturally determined belief that the rich are deserving renders equality a less important objective in the first place. I develop this analytical result in the theoretical framework of Alesina and Angeletos (2005), and I provide robust empirical support for it in a panel of 38 countries over the period 1964-2004.
Subjects: 
culture
inequality
growth
JEL: 
O15
O40
P16
Z10
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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