IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecmode/v32y2013icp516-523.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How does wealth distribution affect firm's incentive to innovate better quality goods?

Author

Listed:
  • Shen, Ling

Abstract

The paper contributes to the literature relating to inequality and economic growth, in particular, we investigate the effects of wealth distribution on the kind of growth driven by innovation, i.e. Schumpeterian growth. Since two types of individuals are assumed, the poor and the rich, Gini-coefficient is treated in two variables, namely the relative wealth of the poor and the population share of the poor, each having a different effect on economic performance. Particularly in the separating equilibrium, an improvement in the relative wealth of the poor impedes economic growth, but a decline in the population share of the poor enhances economic growth. Furthermore, the current paper combines the Schumpeterian quality improvement model and the neoclassic production function. Thus, the impact of wealth inequality on economic growth is through the supply of human capital as well as the demand for better quality goods. Our results suggest that empirical research on the base of Gini-coefficient cannot generate a general relationship between wealth inequality and economic growth.

Suggested Citation

  • Shen, Ling, 2013. "How does wealth distribution affect firm's incentive to innovate better quality goods?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 516-523.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecmode:v:32:y:2013:i:c:p:516-523
    DOI: 10.1016/j.econmod.2013.02.035
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264999313000977
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.econmod.2013.02.035?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dennis Tao Yang, 1999. "Urban-Biased Policies and Rising Income Inequality in China," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(2), pages 306-310, May.
    2. Aghion, Philippe & Howitt, Peter, 1992. "A Model of Growth through Creative Destruction," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 60(2), pages 323-351, March.
    3. Reto Foellmi & Josef Zweimuller, 2006. "Income Distribution and Demand-Induced Innovations," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 73(4), pages 941-960.
    4. Dennis Tao Yang & Hao Zhou, 1999. "Rural-urban disparity and sectoral labour allocation in China," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(3), pages 105-133.
    5. Josef Zweimüller & Johann K. Brunner, 2005. "Innovation And Growth With Rich And Poor Consumers," Metroeconomica, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 56(2), pages 233-262, May.
    6. Alberto Alesina & Dani Rodrik, 1994. "Distributive Politics and Economic Growth," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(2), pages 465-490.
    7. Cecilia Garcia-Penalosa & Eve Caroli & Philippe Aghion, 1999. "Inequality and Economic Growth: The Perspective of the New Growth Theories," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 37(4), pages 1615-1660, December.
    8. Roland Bénabou, 1996. "Inequality and Growth," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1996, Volume 11, pages 11-92, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Zweimuller, Josef, 2000. "Schumpeterian Entrepreneurs Meet Engel's Law: The Impact of Inequality on Innovation-Driven Growth," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 5(2), pages 185-206, June.
    10. Clarke, George R. G., 1995. "More evidence on income distribution and growth," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(2), pages 403-427, August.
    11. Kevin M. Murphy & Andrei Shleifer & Robert Vishny, 1989. "Income Distribution, Market Size, and Industrialization," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 104(3), pages 537-564.
    12. repec:dau:papers:123456789/10091 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Banerjee, Abhijit V & Duflo, Esther, 2003. "Inequality and Growth: What Can the Data Say?," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 8(3), pages 267-299, September.
    14. Berg, Andrew & Sachs, Jeffrey, 1988. "The debt crisis structural explanations of country performance," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(3), pages 271-306, November.
    15. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 1994. "Is Inequality Harmful for Growth?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(3), pages 600-621, June.
    16. Chen, Been-Lon, 2003. "An inverted-U relationship between inequality and long-run growth," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 78(2), pages 205-212, February.
    17. Barro, Robert J, 2000. "Inequality and Growth in a Panel of Countries," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 5-32, March.
    18. Kristin J. Forbes, 2000. "A Reassessment of the Relationship between Inequality and Growth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(4), pages 869-887, September.
    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. Zhang, Muyang & Zhou, Guangsu & Fan, Gang, 2020. "Political Control and Economic Inequality: Evidence from Chinese Cities," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).

    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. Reto Foellmi & Josef Zweimuller, 2006. "Income Distribution and Demand-Induced Innovations," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 73(4), pages 941-960.
    2. Grossmann, Volker, 2008. "Risky human capital investment, income distribution, and macroeconomic dynamics," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 19-42, March.
    3. Ozan Hatipoglu, 2007. "A Demand Based Theory of Income Distribution and Growth," Working Papers 2007/08, Bogazici University, Department of Economics.
    4. Marta Simões & João Andrade & Adelaide Duarte, 2013. "A regional perspective on inequality and growth in Portugal using panel cointegration analysis," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 10(3), pages 427-451, September.
    5. Been-Lon Chen & Jang-Ting Guo, 2005. "Income Inequality and Economic Growth: A Simple Theoretical Synthesis," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 6(2), pages 319-329, November.
    6. Christophe Ehrhart, 2009. "The effects of inequality on growth: a survey of the theoretical and empirical literature," Working Papers 107, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    7. Josef ZweimüLler, 2000. "Inequality, Redistribution, and Economic Growth," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 27(1), pages 1-20, March.
    8. Mikulas Luptacik & Bernhard Mahlberg, 2018. "Revisiting the Efficiency-Equity Trade-off: A Muli-objective Linear Problem combined with an extended Leontief Input Output Model," Department of Economic Policy Working Paper Series 016, Department of Economic Policy, Faculty of National Economy, University of Economics in Bratislava.
    9. David Castells & Vicente Royuela, 2012. "Agglomeration, Inequality and Economic Growth: Cross-section and panel data analysis," ERSA conference papers ersa12p492, European Regional Science Association.
    10. Shinhye Chang & Rangan Gupta & Stephen M. Miller, 2018. "Causality Between Per Capita Real GDP and Income Inequality in the U.S.: Evidence from a Wavelet Analysis," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 135(1), pages 269-289, January.
    11. Shin, Inyong, 2012. "Income inequality and economic growth," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 29(5), pages 2049-2057.
    12. Adalgiso Amendola & Roberto Dell�Anno, 2014. "Income inequality and economic growth: an empirical investigation in Mediterranean countries," RIEDS - Rivista Italiana di Economia, Demografia e Statistica - The Italian Journal of Economic, Demographic and Statistical Studies, SIEDS Societa' Italiana di Economia Demografia e Statistica, vol. 68(2), pages 35-58, April-Jun.
    13. Gravier-Rymaszewska, Joanna & Tyrowicz, Joanna & Kochanowicz, Jacek, 2010. "Intra-provincial inequalities and economic growth in China," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 237-258, September.
    14. David Castells-Quintana & Vicente Royuela, 2017. "Tracking positive and negative effects of inequality on long-run growth," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 53(4), pages 1349-1378, December.
    15. Reto Foellmi & Josef Zweimüller, 2017. "Is inequality harmful for innovation and growth? Price versus market size effects," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 27(2), pages 359-378, April.
    16. Daron Acemoglu & María Angélica Bautista & Pablo Querubín & James A. Robinson, 2007. "Economic and Political Inequality in Development: The Case of Cundinamarca, Colombia," NBER Working Papers 13208, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Roberto Dell'Anno & Adalgiso Amendola, 2015. "Social Exclusion and Economic Growth: An Empirical Investigation in European Economies," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 61(2), pages 274-301, June.
    18. David Castells-Quintana & Vicente Royuela, 2014. "Agglomeration, inequality and economic growth," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 52(2), pages 343-366, March.
    19. Adelaide Duarte & Marta Simões, 2009. "Channels of transmission of inequality to growth: A survey of the theory and evidence from a Portuguese perspective," GEMF Working Papers 2009-07, GEMF, Faculty of Economics, University of Coimbra.
    20. Marrero, Gustavo A. & Rodríguez, Juan G., 2013. "Inequality of opportunity and growth," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 107-122.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Inequality; Economic growth;

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • D43 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection
    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration

    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:eee:ecmode:v:32:y:2013:i:c:p:516-523. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/30411 .

    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.