Inequality and Growth: Does Time Change Anything?

The econometric analysis of economic growth has always been subject to major flaws and shortcomings. Data scarcity and reliability, parameter heterogeneity, omitted variable bias, endogeneity problems, … have seriously tainted estimation results. In this paper we propose an alternative framework that explicitly deals with these issues. We investigate the relation between income inequality and economic growth in a number of OECD countries in a cointegrated VAR-setting. Our results suggest that different models hold for different countries. However, for most countries the imperfect markets model better describes reality than the complete markets model.