Economic Growth - Inequality and Economic Growth

Inequality and Economic Growth

Initial theories incorrectly stated that inequality had a positive effect on economic development. The marginal propensity to save was thought to increase with wealth and inequality increases savings and capital accumulation. However, it was determined much later that the analysis based on comparing yearly equality figures to yearly growth rates was flawed and misleading because it takes several years for the effects of equality changes to manifest in economic growth changes.

The credit market imperfection approach, developed by Galor and Zeira (1993), demonstrates that inequality in the presence of credit market imperfections has a long lasting detrimental effect on human capital formation and economic development.

The political economy approach, developed by Alesian and Rodrik (1994) and Persson and Tabellini (1994), argues that inequality is harmful for economic development because inequality generates a pressure to adopt redistributive policies that have an adverse effect on investment and economic growth.

Read more about this topic:  Economic Growth

Famous quotes containing the words inequality and, inequality, economic and/or growth:

    All the aspects of this desert are beautiful, whether you behold it in fair weather or foul, or when the sun is just breaking out after a storm, and shining on its moist surface in the distance, it is so white, and pure, and level, and each slight inequality and track is so distinctly revealed; and when your eyes slide off this, they fall on the ocean.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    All the aspects of this desert are beautiful, whether you behold it in fair weather or foul, or when the sun is just breaking out after a storm, and shining on its moist surface in the distance, it is so white, and pure, and level, and each slight inequality and track is so distinctly revealed; and when your eyes slide off this, they fall on the ocean.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    The chief reason warfare is still with us is neither a secret death-wish of the human species, nor an irrepressible instinct of aggression, nor, finally and more plausibly, the serious economic and social dangers inherent in disarmament, but the simple fact that no substitute for this final arbiter in international affairs has yet appeared on the political scene.
    Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)

    Perhaps our national ambition to standardize ourselves has behind it the notion that democracy means standardization. But standardization is the surest way to destroy the initiative, to benumb the creative impulse above all else essential to the vitality and growth of democratic ideals.
    Ida M. Tarbell (1857–1944)