This paper examines the functional relationships between income inequality, economic factors, institutions, and Kuznets' inverted-U hypothesis. A model that incorporates interactive as well as direct effects of several factors to capture their combined effect on inequality is developed. The...

This paper updates and extends the work of Barro (2000). International data confirm the presence of the Kuznets curve-an inverse-U shape relationship between income inequality and per capita GDP-that is relatively stable from the 1960s into the 2000s. The direct effect of international openness...

We explore the relationship between import protection and the household distribution of income. We first develop a general-equilibrium mapping from tariffs to household inequality measures. This also yields predictions for linkages between tariffs, development level, and observed household...