SPATIAL DEPENDENCE OF INCOME INEQUALITY AMONG TRADING PARTNERS

Abstract

Questions surrounding income inequality have received great attention in the recent economic literature. Traditionally the literature does not attempt to investigate how income inequality in a country could be affected by the income inequality of countries economically related to it. Using Trade Spatial Lags, this paper shows that a country's income inequality is affected by the inequality of its top trading partners. This investigation shows a strong positive relationship of the Gini coefficient among major trading partners. To conduct the study, we use panel data for a sample of 180 countries from 1960 to 2008.Spatial econometrics, income inequality, Gini coefficient