IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/restud/v64y1997i2p151-172..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Theory of Trickle-Down Growth and Development

Author

Listed:
  • Philippe Aghion
  • Patrick Bolton

Abstract

This paper develops a model of growth and income inequalities in the presence of imperfect capital markets, and it analyses the trickle-down effect of capital accumulation. Moral hazard with limited wealth constraints on the part of the borrowers is the source of both capital market imperfections and the emergence of persistent income inequalities. Three main conclusions are obtained from this model. First, when the rate of capital accumulation is sufficiently high, the economy converges to a unique invariant wealth distribution. Second, even though the trickle-down mechanism can lead to a unique steady-state distribution under laissez-faire, there is room for government intervention: in particular, redistribution of wealth from rich lenders to poor and middle-class borrowers improves the production efficiency of the economy both because it brings about greater equality of opportunity and also because it accelerates the trickle-down process. Third, the process of capital accumulation initially has the effect of widening inequalities but in later stages it reduces them: in other words, this model can generate a Kuznets curve.

Suggested Citation

  • Philippe Aghion & Patrick Bolton, 1997. "A Theory of Trickle-Down Growth and Development," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 64(2), pages 151-172.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:restud:v:64:y:1997:i:2:p:151-172.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.2307/2971707
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    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. Abhijit V. Banerjee & Andrew F. Newman, 1991. "Risk-Bearing and the Theory of Income Distribution," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 58(2), pages 211-235.
    2. Ben Bernanke & Mark Gertler, 1990. "Financial Fragility and Economic Performance," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 105(1), pages 87-114.
    3. Loury, Glenn C, 1981. "Intergenerational Transfers and the Distribution of Earnings," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 49(4), pages 843-867, June.
    4. Banerjee, Abhijit V & Newman, Andrew F, 1993. "Occupational Choice and the Process of Development," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 101(2), pages 274-298, April.
    5. Andreoni, James, 1989. "Giving with Impure Altruism: Applications to Charity and Ricardian Equivalence," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(6), pages 1447-1458, December.
    6. Oded Galor & Joseph Zeira, 1993. "Income Distribution and Macroeconomics," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 60(1), pages 35-52.
    7. Douglas W. Diamond, 1984. "Financial Intermediation and Delegated Monitoring," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 51(3), pages 393-414.
    8. Aghion, Philippe & Bolton, Patrick, 1992. "Distribution and growth in models of imperfect capital markets," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 36(2-3), pages 603-611, April.
    9. Hopenhayn, Hugo A & Prescott, Edward C, 1992. "Stochastic Monotonicity and Stationary Distributions for Dynamic Economies," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 60(6), pages 1387-1406, November.
    10. J. A. Mirrlees, 1971. "An Exploration in the Theory of Optimum Income Taxation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 38(2), pages 175-208.
    11. Stiglitz, Joseph E & Weiss, Andrew, 1981. "Credit Rationing in Markets with Imperfect Information," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(3), pages 393-410, June.
    12. Sappington, David, 1983. "Limited liability contracts between principal and agent," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 1-21, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Hidalgo-Cabrillana, Ana, 2004. "Does asymmetric information promote talented people?," UC3M Working papers. Economics we042809, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía.
    2. Hidalgo Cabrillana, Ana, 2009. "Endogenous capital market imperfections, human capital, and intergenerational mobility," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(2), pages 285-298, November.
    3. Conning, Jonathan & Udry, Christopher, 2007. "Rural Financial Markets in Developing Countries," Handbook of Agricultural Economics, in: Robert Evenson & Prabhu Pingali (ed.), Handbook of Agricultural Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 56, pages 2857-2908, Elsevier.
    4. Mani, Anandi, 2001. "Income Distribution and the Demand Constraint," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 6(2), pages 107-133, June.
    5. Gruner, Hans Peter, 2003. "Redistribution as a selection device," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 108(2), pages 194-216, February.
    6. Marrero, Gustavo A. & Rodríguez, Juan G., 2013. "Inequality of opportunity and growth," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 107-122.
    7. Christiane Clemens & Maik Heinemann, 2005. "Endogenous Redistributive Cycles An Overlapping Generations Approach to Social Conflict and Cyclical Growth," Working Paper Series in Economics 5, University of Lüneburg, Institute of Economics.
    8. Banerjee, Abhijit V & Newman, Andrew F, 1993. "Occupational Choice and the Process of Development," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 101(2), pages 274-298, April.
    9. Flávia Chein & Cristine Pinto, 2018. "Credit constraint and human capital investment: an empirical analysis using Brazilian household budget survey," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(21), pages 2369-2385, May.
    10. Marcello D'Amato & Christian Di Pietro & Marco M. Sorge, 2023. "Left and Right: A Tale of Two Tails of the Wealth Distribution," CSEF Working Papers 691, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy.
    11. Aghion, Philippe & Bolton, Patrick, 1992. "Distribution and growth in models of imperfect capital markets," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 36(2-3), pages 603-611, April.
    12. Masako Ikefuji & Ryo Horii, 2007. "Wealth Heterogeneity and Escape from the Poverty–Environment Trap," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 9(6), pages 1041-1068, December.
    13. Esteban, Joan & Ray, Debraj, 2000. "Wealth constraints, lobbying and the efficiency of public allocation," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 44(4-6), pages 694-705, May.
    14. Roland Benabou, 2002. "Tax and Education Policy in a Heterogeneous-Agent Economy: What Levels of Redistribution Maximize Growth and Efficiency?," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(2), pages 481-517, March.
    15. Angeletos, George-Marios & Calvet, Laurent-Emmanuel, 2006. "Idiosyncratic production risk, growth and the business cycle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(6), pages 1095-1115, September.
    16. Patricio S. Dalton & Sayantan Ghosal & Anandi Mani, 2016. "Poverty and Aspirations Failure," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 126(590), pages 165-188, February.
    17. Joël Hellier & Stéphane Lambrecht, 2013. "Inequality, Growth and Welfare: The Main Links," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Joël Hellier & Nathalie Chusseau (ed.), Growing Income Inequalities, chapter 9, pages 274-311, Palgrave Macmillan.
    18. Manoel F. Meyer Bittencourt, 2006. "Financial Development and Inequality: Brazil 1985-99," Working Papers 26, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    19. Besley, Timothy, 1995. "Savings, credit and insurance," Handbook of Development Economics, in: Hollis Chenery & T.N. Srinivasan (ed.), Handbook of Development Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 36, pages 2123-2207, Elsevier.
    20. Hendel, Igal & Shapiro, Joel & Willen, Paul, 2005. "Educational opportunity and income inequality," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(5-6), pages 841-870, June.

    More about this item

    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:oup:restud:v:64:y:1997:i:2:p:151-172.. 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/restud .

    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.