Abstract This article investigates the determinants of the income inequality for a global sample including 87 economies between 2002 and 2014. Notably, the study examines the impacts of technology development through the internet usage, mobile usage and fixed telephone usage on income inequality. Furthermore, we control and further examine the non-linear impacts of institutional quality and human capital on income inequality. We find that the promotion of internet and mobile diffusion appear to be a way of reducing income inequality in the short and the long run. Nevertheless, we find an inverted-U shape relationship between the human capital and the institutional quality with the income inequality, but not for the case of income level. These findings are observed in our full sample and also in two sub-samples respectively composed by 46 low and middle income economies (LMEs) and 41 high income economies (HIEs). Beyond the empirical results supporting the Kuznets Curve hypothesis (KC) for the human capital and institutions, the major contributions of this article is to show that income inequality issue is actually not a matter of income only since diverse socio-economic and technological considerations have to be taken into account if policy makers want to reduce optimally these inequalities. This article offers an extended theoretical framework (inspired by the Kuznets curve hypothesis) to study income inequalities in a societal perspective in which telecommunications (internet, mobile and land phones) are integrated as key components. Our results confirm that internet and mobile use should actually be part of an active economic policy aiming at reducing income inequalities.

中文翻译：

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互联网、手机和陆上电话对收入不平等和库兹涅茨曲线的影响：跨国分析

摘要 本文调查了 2002 年至 2014 年间包括 87 个经济体在内的全球样本收入不平等的决定因素。值得注意的是，该研究通过互联网使用、移动使用和固定电话使用来检验技术发展对收入不平等的影响。此外，我们控制并进一步研究了制度质量和人力资本对收入不平等的非线性影响。我们发现，从短期和长期来看，促进互联网和移动传播似乎是减少收入不平等的一种方式。尽管如此，我们发现人力资本与制度质量与收入不平等呈倒U型关系，但收入水平并非如此。这些发现在我们的完整样本以及分别由 46 个低收入和中等收入经济体 (LME) 和 41 个高收入经济体 (HIE) 组成的两个子样本中观察到。除了支持人力资本和制度的库兹涅茨曲线假设 (KC) 的实证结果外，本文的主要贡献是表明收入不平等问题实际上不仅仅是收入问题，因为必须考虑不同的社会经济和技术因素如果政策制定者希望以最佳方式减少这些不平等，则需要考虑这些因素。本文提供了一个扩展的理论框架（受库兹涅茨曲线假设的启发），从社会角度研究收入不平等，其中电信（互联网、移动和陆地电话）被整合为关键组成部分。