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Growth and Inequality: The Role of Foreign Trade and Investment

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  • Cooper, Richard
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    Abstract

    This paper addresses the influence of foreign trade and investment on inequality or, more generally, on the distribution of income, with a focus on developing countries. There has been some scholarly debate on the influence on economic growth of economic openness to the rest of the world. Since growth affects the level of poverty and the distribution of income, the trade–growth nexus is also addressed. "Distribution of income" has several quite different meanings, apart from the issue of the specific measurements that are used to describe it. Economic theory has mainly been concerned with the functional distribution of income, that is, with the returns to different identifiable factors of production and their respective shares in total income of a particular country, such as the share of labor income in national income. Popular and political discourse is more concerned with the size distribution of income, such as the fraction of national income accruing to the top ten percent, or the bottom decile, of residents of the country in question — and in particular on whether inequality has risen or declined. In recent years, concern with the size distribution of income has extended to the global distribution, where observations are on countries, grouped by per capita income, rather than on individuals. The two concepts of distribution are related by the ownership of the factors of production, especially land in a predominantly agrarian economy, capital in a modern economy. If ownership of land and capital were evenly distributed across a population, even significant changes in the functional distribution of income would have little impact on the size distribution of income.

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    File URL: http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3677049/Cooper_GrowthInequality.pdf
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    Bibliographic Info

    Paper provided by Harvard University Department of Economics in its series Scholarly Articles with number 3677049.

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    Date of creation: 2001
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    Publication status: Published in WCFIA Working Paper
    Handle: RePEc:hrv:faseco:3677049

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    Cited by:
    1. Jennifer Tobin & Susan Rose-Ackerman, 2003. "Foreign Direct Investment and the Business Environment in Developing Countries: the Impact of Bilateral Investment Treaties," William Davidson Institute Working Papers Series 587, William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan.
    2. Indra de Soysa & Eric Neumayer, 2004. "False Prophet, or Genuine Savior? Assessing the Effects of Economic Openness on Sustainable Development, 1980–1999," International Trade 0409001, EconWPA, revised 13 Oct 2004.
    3. A Singh, 2001. "Income Inequality in Advanced Economies: A Critical Examination of the Trade and Technology Theories and an Alternative Perspective," ESRC Centre for Business Research - Working Papers wp219, ESRC Centre for Business Research.

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