Democratic Institutions, Natural Resources, and Income Inequality

0519421 - ÚVGZ 2020 RIV US eng J - Journal Article
Hartwell, C. A. - Horváth, R. - Horváthová, Eva - Popova, O. P.
Democratic Institutions, Natural Resources, and Income Inequality.
Comparative Economic Studies. Roč. 61, JUL 2019 (2019), s. 531-550. ISSN 0888-7233
Institutional support: RVO:86652079
Keywords : institutions * natural resources * inequality * democracy
OECD category: Applied Economics, Econometrics
Method of publishing: Limited access
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057%2Fs41294-019-00102-2

This paper examines how democratic institutions shape the nexus of natural resources and income inequality, under the hypothesis that democracy can help to alleviate the possible effects that resources may have on income inequality. Starting from a survey of the existing literature, we provide a cross-country regression analysis showing that the effect of natural resources on income inequality does indeed depend on democracy. Our results suggest that, if the level of democracy in a country is high, natural resources have the ability to lower inequality. This finding suggests several avenues for future research.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0304398