Does inflation worsen income inequality? A meta-analysis

[en] Despite extensive econometric evidence, the research literature has been unable to draw firm conclusions regarding the effect of inflation on income inequality. In this paper, we apply meta-regression methods to a novel data set of 1767 estimates reported in 124 published studies that investigate the effect of inflation on income inequality. We distinguish between estimates that examine the effect of inflation on levels of income inequality and those that examine the effect of inflation on differences of income inequality. For level estimates, not controlling for moderator variables points to mild publication bias in favor of positive estimates (i.e., the current literature favors publishing studies that find that inflation increases income inequality), but publication selectivity does not hold once we control for a set of moderator variables. For difference estimates, mild publication bias in favor of negative estimates is found only once we control for moderator variables. In addition, our results suggest that inflation has a (small-to-moderate) inequality increasing effect for both level and difference estimates. Furthermore, we show that several factors influence reported estimates, including researcher choices concerning the measurement of inflation and inequality, the characteristics of data and estimation methods, and controlling for other components of inequality.

Disciplines :

Macroeconomics & monetary economics
Social economics

Author, co-author :

SINTOS, Andreas ^✱; University of Luxembourg > Faculty of Law, Economics and Finance (FDEF) > Department of Economics and Management (DEM) ; Department of Economics, University of Piraeus, Piraeus, Greece

^✱ These authors have contributed equally to this work.

External co-authors :

Language :

English

Title :

Does inflation worsen income inequality? A meta-analysis

Publication date :

December 2023

Journal title :

Economic Systems

ISSN :

0939-3625

eISSN :

1878-5433

Publisher :

Elsevier B.V.

Volume :

Issue :

Pages :

101146

Peer reviewed :

Peer Reviewed verified by ORBi

Additional URL :

https://api.elsevier.com/content/article/PII:S0939362523000857?httpAccept=text/xml

Funding text :

The author sincerely thanks Prof. Dr. Richard Frensch, the Managing Editor, and the reviewers for their valuable and constructive feedback, which significantly contributed to enhancing the quality of the paper. All remaining errors are those of the author. No specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors was received for this research.

Data Set :

https://data.mendeley.com/datasets/kvgv42557d/1

Available on ORBilu :

since 03 March 2024

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