Do Labor Market Policies and Growth Fundamentals Matter for Income Inequality in Oecd Countries? Some Empirical Evidence

Download or read book Do Labor Market Policies and Growth Fundamentals Matter for Income Inequality in Oecd Countries? Some Empirical Evidence written by Mr.Patrick Van Houdt and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 1997-01-01 with total page 27 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Income distribution may be related to fundamentals affecting economic growth and to labor market policies. Noting that inequality is affected by unemployment. This paper presents a model in which labor market policies affect unemployment which in turn affects inequality. The model also includes the effects of changes in per capita income on inequality through the accumulation of physical capital and technological know–how. When a resulting reduced–form relationship is estimated, its explanatory power is surprisingly high: on average, it explains about three quarters of the variation in inequality measures for the OECD countries, and Granger Causality tests confirm the model’s predictions.