IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/tob/wpaper/1303.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Lower Volatility, Higher Inequality: Are They Related?

Author

Listed:
  • Ozan Eksi

Abstract

We investigate the relationship between GDP volatility and income inequality to explain the changes in both variables in the last decades of 20th century. The theoretical results show that these variables are related to the same parameters of the underlying income microdata. These results are supported by two empirical findings: (i) the simultaneity of the structural breaks in the GDP volatility and income inequality series across five industrialized countries; and (ii) the consistency of the results obtained from decomposing the US GDP volatility and income inequality data with those obtained from the US income microdata. The latter finding explains the diverging trends of the variables during the Great Moderation era. It also finds support for the argument that income inequality gives long-lasting responses to structural economic changes.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Ozan Eksi, 2013. "Lower Volatility, Higher Inequality: Are They Related?," Working Papers 1303, TOBB University of Economics and Technology, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:tob:wpaper:1303
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://ikt.web.etu.edu.tr/RePEc/pdf/1303.pdf
    File Function: First version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Raj, Baldev & Slottje, Daniel J, 1994. "The Trend Behavior of Alternative Income Inequality Measures in the United States from 1947-1990 and the Structural Break," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 12(4), pages 479-487, October.
    2. Primiceri, Giorgio E. & van Rens, Thijs, 2009. "Heterogeneous life-cycle profiles, income risk and consumption inequality," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(1), pages 20-39, January.
    3. Coen Teulings & Thijs van Rens, 2008. "Education, Growth, and Income Inequality," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 90(1), pages 89-104, February.
    4. Fatih Guvenen, 2009. "An Empirical Investigation of Labor Income Processes," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 12(1), pages 58-79, January.
    5. Olga Gorbachev, 2011. "Did Household Consumption Become More Volatile?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(5), pages 2248-2270, August.
    6. Joao F. Cocco, 2005. "Portfolio Choice in the Presence of Housing," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 18(2), pages 535-567.
    7. Anson T. Y. Ho & Jie Zhou, 2016. "Housing and Tax-Deferred Retirement Accounts," Staff Working Papers 16-24, Bank of Canada.
    8. A. B. Atkinson, 2003. "Income Inequality in OECD Countries: Data and Explanations," CESifo Economic Studies, CESifo, vol. 49(4), pages 479-513.
    9. Paglin, Morton, 1975. "The Measurement and Trend of Inequality: A Basic Revision," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 65(4), pages 598-609, September.
    10. Zhongjun Qu & Pierre Perron, 2007. "Estimating and Testing Structural Changes in Multivariate Regressions," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 75(2), pages 459-502, March.
    11. MaCurdy, Thomas E., 1982. "The use of time series processes to model the error structure of earnings in a longitudinal data analysis," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 83-114, January.
    12. Richard Blundell & Ian Preston, 1998. "Consumption Inequality and Income Uncertainty," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 113(2), pages 603-640.
    13. Deaton, Angus & Paxson, Christina, 1994. "Intertemporal Choice and Inequality," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 102(3), pages 437-467, June.
    14. James H. Stock & Mark W. Watson, 2005. "Understanding Changes In International Business Cycle Dynamics," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 3(5), pages 968-1006, September.
    15. Sabelhaus, John & Song, Jae, 2010. "The great moderation in micro labor earnings," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(4), pages 391-403, May.
    16. Robert A. Moffitt & Peter Gottschalk, 2012. "Trends in the Transitory Variance of Male Earnings: Methods and Evidence," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 47(1), pages 204-236.
    17. NICHOLS Austin, 2008. "Trends in Income Inequality, Volatility and Mobility Risk," IRISS Working Paper Series 2008-10, IRISS at CEPS/INSTEAD.
    18. Kjetil Storesletten & Chris I. Telmer & Amir Yaron, 2004. "Cyclical Dynamics in Idiosyncratic Labor Market Risk," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(3), pages 695-717, June.
    19. Dynan Karen & Elmendorf Douglas & Sichel Daniel, 2012. "The Evolution of Household Income Volatility," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 12(2), pages 1-42, December.
    20. Laura González Cabanillas & Eric Ruscher, 2008. "The Great Moderation in the euro area: What role have macroeconomic policies played ?," European Economy - Economic Papers 2008 - 2015 331, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
    21. Uren Lawrence, 2008. "Inequality, Volatility and Labour Market Efficiency," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 8(1), pages 1-30, May.
    22. Peter M. Summers, 2005. "What caused the Great Moderation? : some cross-country evidence," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, vol. 90(Q III), pages 5-32.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Chang, Shinhye & Gupta, Rangan & Miller, Stephen M. & Wohar, Mark E., 2019. "Growth volatility and inequality in the U.S.: A wavelet analysis," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 521(C), pages 48-73.
    2. Goodness C. Aye & Giray Gozgor & Rangan Gupta, 2020. "Dynamic and Asymmetric Response of Inequality to Income Volatility: The Case of the United Kingdom," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 147(3), pages 747-762, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Primiceri, Giorgio E. & van Rens, Thijs, 2009. "Heterogeneous life-cycle profiles, income risk and consumption inequality," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(1), pages 20-39, January.
    2. Fatih Guvenen, 2007. "Learning Your Earning: Are Labor Income Shocks Really Very Persistent?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(3), pages 687-712, June.
    3. Robert Moffitt & Sisi Zhang, 2018. "Income Volatility and the PSID: Past Research and New Results," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 108, pages 277-280, May.
    4. Tao Wang, 2023. "Perceived versus Calibrated Income Risks in Heterogeneous-Agent Consumption Models," Staff Working Papers 23-59, Bank of Canada.
    5. Robert Moffitt & Sisi Zhang, 2018. "The PSID and Income Volatility: Its Record of Seminal Research and Some New Findings," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 680(1), pages 48-81, November.
    6. Pedro Albarran & Raquel Carrasco & Maite Martinez‐Granado, 2009. "Inequality for Wage Earners and Self‐Employed: Evidence from Panel Data," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 71(4), pages 491-518, August.
    7. Tony Smith & M. Fatih Guvenen, 2007. "Inferring Labor Income Risk from Economic Choices: An Indirect Inference Approach," 2007 Meeting Papers 1024, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    8. Masakatsu Okubo, 2015. "Earnings Dynamics and Profile Heterogeneity: Estimates from Japanese Panel Data," The Japanese Economic Review, Japanese Economic Association, vol. 66(1), pages 112-146, March.
    9. Gustafsson, Johan & Holmberg, Johan, 2022. "Permanent and transitory earnings dynamics and lifetime income inequality in Sweden," Umeå Economic Studies 1005, Umeå University, Department of Economics.
    10. Halliday Timothy, 2011. "Health Inequality over the Life-Cycle," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 11(3), pages 1-21, October.
    11. Nao Sudo & Michio Suzuki & Tomoaki Yamada, 2012. "Inequalities in Japanese Economy during the Lost Decades," CIRJE F-Series CIRJE-F-856, CIRJE, Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo.
    12. Greg Kaplan & Giovanni L. Violante, 2010. "How Much Consumption Insurance beyond Self-Insurance?," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(4), pages 53-87, October.
    13. Jonathan Heathcote & Kjetil Storesletten & Giovanni L. Violante, 2009. "Quantitative Macroeconomics with Heterogeneous Households," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 1(1), pages 319-354, May.
    14. Estelle Dauchy & Francisco Navarro-Sanchez & Nathan Seegert, 2021. "Taxation and Inequality: Active and Passive Channels," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 42, pages 156-177, October.
    15. Meghir, Costas & Pistaferri, Luigi, 2011. "Earnings, Consumption and Life Cycle Choices," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 9, pages 773-854, Elsevier.
    16. Cappellari, Lorenzo & Jenkins, Stephen P., 2014. "Earnings and labour market volatility in Britain, with a transatlantic comparison," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 201-211.
    17. Jonathan Heathcote & Kjetil Storesletten & Giovanni L. Violante, 2014. "Consumption and Labor Supply with Partial Insurance: An Analytical Framework," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(7), pages 2075-2126, July.
    18. Blundell, Richard & Graber, Michael & Mogstad, Magne, 2015. "Labor income dynamics and the insurance from taxes, transfers, and the family," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 58-73.
    19. Etheridge, Ben, 2015. "A test of the household income process using consumption and wealth data," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 129-157.
    20. Feigenbaum James A. & Li Geng, 2012. "Life Cycle Dynamics of Income Uncertainty and Consumption," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 12(1), pages 1-49, May.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:tob:wpaper:1303. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Ismail Saglam (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ibetutr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.