IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/qed/dpaper/285.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Income Inequality and the Cost of Recessions

Author

Listed:
  • Mostafa Shahee

    (Department of Policy Studies, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada)

  • Glenn P. Jenkins

    (Queen’s University, Canada and Eastern Mediterranean University, North Cyprus)

Abstract

This article examines empirically the relationship between the severities of the recessions experienced by countries and their income distributions. The analysis is carried out for 36 countries over a period of 40 years. The empirical evidence from this paper suggests that a greater degree of income inequality increases the cumulative loss of GDP inflicted by recessions. The increase cost emerges from both a longer duration and a deeper amplitude for the contractionary phase of the business cycle.

Suggested Citation

  • Mostafa Shahee & Glenn P. Jenkins, 2016. "Income Inequality and the Cost of Recessions," Development Discussion Papers 2016-03, JDI Executive Programs.
    • Handle: RePEc:qed:dpaper:285
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cri-world.com/publications/qed_dp_285.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Joseph STIGLITZ, 2013. "The global crisis, social protection and jobs," International Labour Review, International Labour Organization, vol. 152, pages 93-106, January.
    2. Stock, James H & Wright, Jonathan H & Yogo, Motohiro, 2002. "A Survey of Weak Instruments and Weak Identification in Generalized Method of Moments," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 20(4), pages 518-529, October.
    3. Michael Kumhof & Romain Rancière & Pablo Winant, 2015. "Inequality, Leverage, and Crises," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(3), pages 1217-1245, March.
    4. repec:ilo:ilowps:470934 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 1994. "Is Inequality Harmful for Growth?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(3), pages 600-621, June.
    6. Palley,Thomas I., 2013. "From Financial Crisis to Stagnation," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107612464.
    7. Thomas Palley, 2010. "The Relative Permanent Income Theory of Consumption: A Synthetic Keynes-Duesenberry-Friedman Model," Review of Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(1), pages 41-56.
    8. Raghuram G. Rajan, 2010. "Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 9111.
    9. Oecd, 2009. "Employment and Social Protection," OECD Journal on Development, OECD Publishing, vol. 9(4), pages 7-54.
    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. Till van Treeck, 2012. "Did inequality cause the U.S. financial crisis?," IMK Working Paper 91-2012, IMK at the Hans Boeckler Foundation, Macroeconomic Policy Institute.
    2. van Treeck, Till. & Sturn, Simon., 2012. "Income inequality as a cause of the Great Recession? : A survey of current debates," ILO Working Papers 994709343402676, International Labour Organization.
    3. Till Treeck, 2014. "Did Inequality Cause The U.S. Financial Crisis?," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(3), pages 421-448, July.
    4. Christian A Belabed & Thomas Theobald & Till van Treeck, 2018. "Income distribution and current account imbalances [Notes on capacity utilisation, distribution and accumulation]," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 42(1), pages 47-94.
    5. Thomas I. Palley, 2013. "Gattopardo economics: the crisis and the mainstream response of change that keeps things the same," European Journal of Economics and Economic Policies: Intervention, Edward Elgar Publishing, vol. 10(2), pages 193-206.
    6. Jan Behringer & Till van Treeck, 2013. "Income distribution and current account: A sectoral perspective," IMK Working Paper 125-2013, IMK at the Hans Boeckler Foundation, Macroeconomic Policy Institute.
    7. Jochen Hartwig, 2018. "Wachstumsfolgen von Einkommensungleichheit – Theorie, empirische Evidenz und Politikempfehlungen," Chemnitz Economic Papers 020, Department of Economics, Chemnitz University of Technology.
    8. Jakob Kapeller & Bernhard Schütz, 2015. "Conspicuous Consumption, Inequality and Debt: The Nature of Consumption-driven Profit-led Regimes," Metroeconomica, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 66(1), pages 51-70, February.
    9. European Commission, 2013. "Tax reforms in EU Member States - Tax policy challenges for economic growth and fiscal sustainability – 2013 Report," Taxation Papers 38, Directorate General Taxation and Customs Union, European Commission.
    10. Yılmaz Akyüz, 2018. "Inequality, financialisation and stagnation," The Economic and Labour Relations Review, , vol. 29(4), pages 428-445, December.
    11. Jan Vandemoortele, 2021. "The open‐and‐shut case against inequality," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 39(1), pages 135-151, January.
    12. Thomas Goda & Özlem Onaran & Engelbert Stockhammer, 2017. "Income Inequality and Wealth Concentration in the Recent Crisis," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 48(1), pages 3-27, January.
    13. Chu, Lan Khanh & Hoang, Dung Phuong, 2020. "How does economic complexity influence income inequality? New evidence from international data," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 44-57.
    14. José María, Larrú, 2012. "La relación entre la ayuda al desarrollo y la desigualdad. Evidencia y justificación teórica [Aid and inequality relationship. Evidence and theoretical justification]," MPRA Paper 38857, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. 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.
    16. Xinhua Gu & ChunKwok Lei & Li Sheng & Qingbin Zhao, 2021. "Global current account imbalances and the link between income and consumption inequality," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(3), pages 557-572, August.
    17. Li Sheng & Zhaoyong Zhang, 2022. "Revisiting global imbalances: A comparative analysis of income and consumption inequality," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(2), pages 382-390, July.
    18. Jan Behringer & Sabine Stephan & Thomas Theobald, 2017. "Macroeconomic factors behind financial instability," IMK Working Paper 178-2017, IMK at the Hans Boeckler Foundation, Macroeconomic Policy Institute.
    19. Christian Alexander Belabed, 2015. "Income Distribution and the Great Depression," IMK Working Paper 153-2015, IMK at the Hans Boeckler Foundation, Macroeconomic Policy Institute.
    20. Tuomas Malinen, 2013. "Is there a relationship between income inequality and credit cycles?," Working Papers 292, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Recession; income inequality; business cycle; income loss;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E25 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Aggregate Factor Income Distribution
    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:qed:dpaper:285. 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: Mark Babcock (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/qedquca.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.