Does Kuznets Still Matter ?

The Political Economy of the Kuznets Curve

The paper provides a political economy theory of the Kuznets curve. When development leads to increasing inequality, this can induce political instability and force democratization on political elites. Democratization leads to institutional changes which encourage redistribution and reduce inequality. Nevertheless, development does not necessarily induce a Kuznets curve, and it is shown that de...

Does Industrialisation Push up Inequality? New Evidence on the Kuznets Curve from Nineteenth-century Prussian Tax Statistics

This paper presents new estimates of income inequality derived from Prussian tax statistics for the years 1822-1914. Confidence intervals are also calculated. The results show a rise in inequality in the nineteenth century, with a peak around 1906, thus supporting the view put forward by Simon Kuznets that industrialisation will initially lead to a rise in inequality. The paper goes on to consi...

Does the ‘Environmental Kuznets Curve’ exist? An application of long-run structural modeling to Saudi Arabia

Estimating environmental efficiency and Kuznets curve for India

As a result of India's extremely rapid economic growth, the scale and seriousness of environmental problems are no longer in doubt. Whether pollution abatement technologies are utilized more efficiently is crucial in the analysis of environmental management because it influences the cost of alternative production and pollution abatement technologies. In this study, I use state–level industry da...

Kuznets Curve: A Simple Dynamical System-Based Explanation

In the 1950s, a future Nobelist Simon Kuznets discovered the following phenomenon: as a country’s economy improves, inequality first grows but then decreases. In this paper, we provide a simple dynamical system-based explanation for this empirical phenomenon. 1 Kuznets Curve: A Brief Reminder and Need for an Explanation What is the Kuznets curve. In the 1950s, Simon Kuznets, an American economi...