IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ris/adbewp/0310.html

Government Fiscal Policies and Redistribution in Asian Countries

Author

Listed:
  • Iris Claus

    (Asian Development Bank)

  • Jorge Martinez-Vazquez

    (Georgia State University)

  • Violeta Vulovic

    (Georgia State University)

Abstract

This paper assesses the impact of government fiscal policies on income inequality in Asia. It discusses the role and effectiveness of redistributive fiscal policies and quantifies the effects of taxation and government expenditure on income distributions. Panel estimation for 150 countries with data between 1970 and 2009 confirms international empirical findings for Asia. Tax systems tend to be progressive but government expenditures are a more effective tool for redistributing income. Moreover, the results suggest some distinctive differential distributive effect for government expenditure on social protection in Asia. Social protection spending appears to increase income inequality, whereas it reduces it in the rest of the world. Also, adversely affecting the distribution of income in Asia is government expenditure on housing. Some options for improving the effectiveness of fiscal policies in Asia are discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Iris Claus & Jorge Martinez-Vazquez & Violeta Vulovic, 2012. "Government Fiscal Policies and Redistribution in Asian Countries," ADB Economics Working Paper Series 310, Asian Development Bank.
    • Handle: RePEc:ris:adbewp:0310
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.adb.org/publications/government-fiscal-policies-and-redistribution-asian-countries
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Mohamed Traoré, 2018. "Government spending and inclusive growth in sub-Saharan Africa: A panel VAR analysis," CERDI Working papers hal-01940506, HAL.
    2. Bathla, S. & Kumar, A. & Joshi, P.K., 2018. "Regional income inequalities and public investments in rural India," Agricultural Economics Research Review, Agricultural Economics Research Association (India), vol. 31(01).
    3. Kazeem B. Ajide & Olorunfemi Y. Alimi & Simplice A. Asongu, 2019. "Ethnic Diversity and Inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa: Do Institutions Reduce the Noise?," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 145(3), pages 1033-1062, October.
    4. Peter Tóth & Andrea Tkáčová & Katarína Muľová, . "Redistributive Policies of EU Member Countries in the Context of Welfare Regimes," Prague Economic Papers, Prague University of Economics and Business, vol. 0.
    5. Sonali Jain-Chandra & Tidiane Kinda & Kalpana Kochhar & Shi Piao & Johanna Schauer, 2019. "Sharing the Growth Dividend: Analysis of Inequality in Asia," Journal of Banking and Financial Economics, University of Warsaw, Faculty of Management, vol. 2(12), pages 5-28, September.
    6. Gohar Samvel Sedrakyan & Laura Varela-Candamio, 2017. "The Impact of Public Expenditures on Economic Growth in Two Very Different Countries: A comparative Analysis of Armenia and Spain," International Center for Public Policy Working Paper Series, at AYSPS, GSU paper1702, International Center for Public Policy, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University.
    7. Zheng Jian & Daniel Jeongdae, 2017. "Prospects for progressive tax reform in Asia and the Pacific," MPDD Working Paper Series WP/17/08, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).
    8. Samina Sabir & Nighat Aziz, 2018. "Impact of Health and Education on Income Inequality: Evidence from Selected Developing Countries," Business & Economic Review, Institute of Management Sciences, Peshawar, Pakistan, vol. 10(4), pages 83-102, December.
    9. Tonmoy Chatterjee & Ghirmai Tesfamariam Teame & Sharmi Sen, 2024. "Impact of income inequality on health and education in Africa: the long-run role of public spending with short-run dynamics," Journal of Computational Social Science, Springer, vol. 7(1), pages 259-304, April.
    10. Edward Anderson & Maria Ana Jalles D'Orey & Maren Duvendack & Lucio Esposito, 2017. "Does Government Spending Affect Income Inequality? A Meta-Regression Analysis," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(4), pages 961-987, September.
    11. Abdulaleem Isiaka & Alexander Mihailov & Giovanni Razzi, 2022. "Distributional Effects of Public Spending and Tax Shocks in Middle-Income Countries: A Panel VAR Approach," Economics Discussion Papers em-dp2022-09, Department of Economics, University of Reading.
    12. Peter Tóth & Andrea Tkáčová & Katarína Muľová, 2022. "Redistributive Policies of EU Member Countries in the Context of Welfare Regimes," Prague Economic Papers, Prague University of Economics and Business, vol. 2022(2), pages 119-142.
    13. Heshmati, Almas & Kim, Jungsuk, 2014. "A Survey of the Role of Fiscal Policy in Addressing Income Inequality, Poverty Reduction and Inclusive Growth," IZA Discussion Papers 8119, IZA Network @ LISER.
    14. Abdulaleem Isiaka & Alexander Mihailov & Giovanni Razzu, 2025. "Government spending reallocations and inequality: evidence from middle-income countries," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 69(3), pages 1229-1257, September.
    15. Sally Torbert, 2022. "Impact Of Taxes And Transfers On Inequality In The Asia-Pacific Region," Asia-Pacific Sustainable Development Journal, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), vol. 29(1), pages 43-65, May.
    16. Mohamed Traoré, 2018. "Government spending and inclusive growth in sub-Saharan Africa: A panel VAR analysis," Working Papers hal-01940506, HAL.
    17. Naz Ata, Farah & Alam, Shaista & Saeed, Noman, 2019. "The Determinants of Income Distribution, an Empirical Analysis of Developing Countries," Public Finance Quarterly, Corvinus University of Budapest, vol. 64(4), pages 494-510.
    18. John C. Anyanwu, 2016. "Empirical Analysis of the Main Drivers of Income Inequality in Southern Africa," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 17(2), pages 337-364, November.
    19. Sedrakyan, Gohar Samvel & Varela-Candamio, Laura, 2019. "Wagner’s law vs. Keynes’ hypothesis in very different countries (Armenia and Spain)," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 41(4), pages 747-762.

    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:ris:adbewp:0310. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Orlee Velarde (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/eradbph.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.