نوع مقاله : علمی
نویسندگان
1 استادیار گروه اقتصاد، پژوهشکده اقتصاد، پژوهشگاه علوم انسانی و مطالعات فرهنگی، تهران، ایران.
2 دانشیار گروه اقتصاد، دانشکده علوم انسانی، دانشگاه آیت اللّه بروجردی، بروجرد، لرستان، ایران.
چکیده
کلیدواژه‌ها
موضوعات
عنوان مقاله [English]
نویسندگان [English]
The relationship between income inequality and economic growth is one of the most controversial issues in the macroeconomic literature, and existing theoretical and empirical evidence provides mixed results regarding the direction and nature of this relationship. Within this framework, the present study employs the Markov-switching Granger causality test to examine the causal relationship between income inequality (measured by the Gini coefficient) and economic growth in Iran over the period 1969–2023. The results indicate that the Iranian economy has experienced two distinct structural regimes during this period, coinciding with a deep structural break associated with the early years of the Islamic Revolution and the war period. The main finding of the study is the existence of a unidirectional and negative causal relationship running from income inequality to economic growth in both regimes, such that increases in inequality significantly weaken economic growth, while no evidence is found in support of reverse causality from growth to inequality. Moreover, the magnitude of the growth-dampening effect of inequality is estimated to be stronger in the regime characterized by a lower average level of inequality (the post-revolution and post-war period). This finding points to the persistence and even intensification of institutional inefficiencies - such as rent-seeking allocation of resources, weak financial inclusion, and deficiencies in the redistribution system - even under relatively more stable macroeconomic conditions. Accordingly, reducing income inequality in Iran should be viewed not as a secondary distributive objective, but as an institutional prerequisite for designing effective and sustainable growth policies.
کلیدواژه‌ها [English]
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