Is inequality harmful for growth? The authors suggest that it is. In a society where distributional conflict is important, political decisions produce economic policies that tax investment and growth-promoting activities in order to redistribute income. The paper formulates a theoretical model that captures this idea. The model's implications are supported by the evidence. Both historical panel data and postwar cross-sections indicate a significant and large negative relation between inequality and growth. This relation is only present in democracies. Copyright 1994 by American Economic Association.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Volume (Year): 84 (1994) Issue (Month): 3 (June) Pages: 600-621 Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML
(with abstract),
plain text
(with abstract),
BibTeX,
RIS (EndNote, RefMan, ProCite),
ReDIF
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.) This item has more than 25 citations. To prevent cluttering this page, these citations are listed on a separate page.