Average Income, Income Inequality and Export Unit Values
Author | : Hélène Latzer |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : 36 |
Release | : 2021 |
ISBN-10 | : OCLC:1240722270 |
ISBN-13 | : |
Rating | : 4/5 (70 Downloads) |
Download or read book Average Income, Income Inequality and Export Unit Values written by Hélène Latzer and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper analyses the relationship between a country's income distribution and its exports' unit values. Using bilateral export flows, we not only confirm the positive association between a country's average income and its export unit values, but further identify a heterogeneous relationship with income inequality: we find a greater income spread to be associated with higher exports unit values in the case of poor countries only. These results are robust to the inclusion of controls for other determinants of export unit values, as well as to the use of alternative measures of income inequality and of the quality index. We finally discuss various theoretical rationalisations for this heterogeneous relationship between income inequality and the quality content of exports along the average income dimension, and show suggestive evidence that demand-side mechanisms can account for it at least partly.