This paper investigates the impact of economic crises on income inequality. Important evidence has emerged that in the aftermath of crises politics becomes polarized and economists have linked this to greater differences in income due to crises. However, the evidence on whether crises are linked to divergent incomes is weak and plagued by i) the possibility of a reverse effect going from great disparity in incomes to major economic crises; ii) the persistent nature of income inequality; and iii) important measurement error in both the dependent and independent variables. We use the longest time stretch of available data on crises and types of crises (Reinhart and Rogoff, 2011) and income inequality (Solt, 2009), as well as decade averaged data, general method of moments and error-correction models to more credibly estimate the complex relationship between crises and inequality. We find strong evidence that currency, banking, inflation and debt crises increase inequality, particularly in the long run.

本文研究了经济危机对收入不平等的影响。重要的证据表明，在危机之后，政治变得两极分化，经济学家将其与危机造成的更大收入差异联系起来。然而，关于危机是否与收入差异有关的证据很薄弱，并且受到以下因素的困扰：ii) 收入不平等的持续性；iii) 因变量和自变量的重要测量误差。我们使用有关危机和危机类型（Reinhart 和 Rogoff，2011 年）和收入不平等（Solt，2009 年）的可用数据的最长时间范围，以及十年平均数据，更可靠地估计危机与不平等之间复杂关系的一般矩方法和纠错模型。我们发现强有力的证据表明，货币、银行业、通货膨胀和债务危机会加剧不平等，尤其是从长期来看。