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Inequality and culture in a cross-section of countries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 May 2014

ANDREAS P. KYRIACOU  and
FRANCISCO JOSÉ LÓPEZ VELÁSQUEZ
ANDREAS P. KYRIACOU*
Affiliation:
Departament d’Economia, Universitat de Girona, Girona, Spain
FRANCISCO JOSÉ LÓPEZ VELÁSQUEZ*
Affiliation:
School of Economics, University of Carabobo, Naguanagua, Venezuela
*
*Email: andreas.kyriacou@udg.edu
**Email: flopez@uc.edu.ve
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Abstract:

A growing literature in the fields of economics and political science has identified the importance of culture for both economic development and good governance. In this article, we argue that a fundamental factor driving cultural traits conducive towards development and governance is inter-personal income inequality. Our empirical evidence from a cross-section of countries and based on measures of culture extracted from the World Values Survey, provides strong support for our argument even after controlling for the effect of an extensive range of potentially confounding variables and the possibility that our estimates may suffer from both measurement error and reverse causality.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Institutional Economics , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , March 2015 , pp. 141 - 166
Copyright
Copyright © Millennium Economics Ltd 2014 

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