Economic globalization and its effect on income inequality

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate recent trends of economic globalization by reviewing existing indicators of openness and to assess the effect of economic globalization on income inequality as derivation from cross-country panel regressions. Reviewing economic literature on trade and financial liberalization leads to the conclusion that there is long-lasting and still ongoing debate on the advantages and disadvantages associated with increasing economic globalization. Due to the fact that theoretical outcomes and conclusions always depend on model used and its underlying assumptions, I strongly recommend emphasizing on empirical results. Therefore, this paper contributes by providing a comprehensive overview of existing aspects of economic globalization. The correlation analysis of 24 economic globalization indicators shows interesting patterns within and across different dimensions of economic globalization. In the final part of this work, the effect of economic globalization on income inequality is investigated. A set of cross-country panel regression are carried out and the results suggest that the trade as well as the financial dimension contributes to rising inequality.submitted by Florian SpringholzUniversität Linz, Diplomarbeit, 2018(VLID)267997