Growing income inequalities in advanced countries

No 260, Working Papers from ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality

Abstract: In this paper, we survey the literature that studies the issue of growing inequalities in advanced countries (the North). We firstly unveil the main facts concerning widening inequality in the North and we underlie the differences between countries and groups of countries. We put forward the concomitance of the rise in inequality with three key developments that are the three major explanations given to growing inequality: globalization, skill biased technological progress and institutional changes. We finally expose the mechanisms behind each explanation and examine the results of the empirical works that attempt to appraise their respective impacts. The overall diagnosis is that the three explanations are valid but (i) their weight may substantially differ across countries and sectors, and (ii) they interact in the determination of inequality.

Keywords: Income Inequality; Globalization; Skill Based Technological Change; Labour Market Institutions. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 E25 F1 J2 O3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2012-08
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.ecineq.org/milano/WP/ECINEQ2012-260.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Chapter: Growing Income Inequalities in Advanced Countries (2013)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inq:inqwps:ecineq2012-260

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Maria Ana Lugo ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).