Purpose

The authors explore the impact of financialization on income inequality for a panel of 19 OECD countries over the period 2000–2017. The authors control for the effect of banking crises, credit market regulation and globalization, among other factors.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors use three proxies for income inequality and four proxies for financialization. The authors employ a panel fixed effects approach using Driscoll and Kraay’s (1998) nonparametric covariance matrix estimator, which produces standard errors that are robust to general forms of cross-sectional dependence.

Findings

The authors provide evidence which to a great extent supports the view that the process of financialization has increased income inequality. In the disposable Gini specifications, two out of the four financialization measures are found to significantly contribute to rising inequality whilst in the specification with the market income Gini coefficient, three out of the four financialization proxies appear to adversely affect inequality. In the specification with the Gini coefficient based on manufacturing pay, the evidence is weak. Furthermore, trade unions appear to play a significant role in reducing inequality in two out of the three Gini specifications while the effect of credit market regulation is rather ambiguous.

Originality/value

The authors’ findings suggest a positive relationship between financialization and income inequality; however, the results depend on the proxies used to measure financialization and income inequality. The authors conclude that the process of financialization in triggering income inequality is complex and merits additional research.

中文翻译：

---

收入不平等和金融化：一种不那么简单的关系

目的

作者探讨了金融化对 19 个经合组织国家在 2000 年至 2017 年期间收入不平等的影响。作者控制了银行危机、信贷市场监管和全球化等因素的影响。

设计/方法/方法

作者使用三个代表收入不平等和四个代表金融化。作者使用 Driscoll 和 Kraay (1998) 的非参数协方差矩阵估计器采用面板固定效应方法，该方法产生的标准误差对横截面依赖的一般形式具有鲁棒性。

发现

作者提供的证据在很大程度上支持金融化进程加剧了收入不平等的观点。在可支配基尼系数规范中，发现四项金融化措施中有两项显着加剧了不平等，而在具有市场收入基尼系数的规范中，四项金融化指标中的三项似乎对不平等产生了不利影响。在基于制造业薪酬的基尼系数规范中，证据较弱。此外，在三个基尼系数中的两个中，工会似乎在减少不平等方面发挥了重要作用，而信贷市场监管的效果则相当模糊。

原创性/价值

作者的发现表明金融化与收入不平等之间存在正相关关系；然而，结果取决于用于衡量金融化和收入不平等的代理。作者得出结论，金融化引发收入不平等的过程很复杂，值得进一步研究。