In recent decades, there have been an increasingly large number of developing countries that have embraced external economic liberalisation policies. Following trade theory, trade liberalisation has the potential to increase employment elasticity of economic growth and hence, have a greater poverty reduction impact, compared to import-substitution or closed economies. However, critics of globalisation often emphasise that the benefits from growth may not be evenly spread; hence, the distributional impacts may have an adverse effect on the poor. Vietnam has undertaken major market-based reforms to transform itself into an outward-oriented economy. The resulting effects show that not only has Vietnam achieved significant growth, but it has also managed to satisfy all the Millennium Development Goals. However, a significant element of Vietnam’s reforms involves integrating the Vietnamese economy with world markets through trade liberalisation policies, which may affect the welfare and distributional impacts on Vietnamese households. This dissertation examines the impact of trade liberalisation on growth, poverty and inequality for Vietnam. It develops a macro-micro analytical framework whereby a dynamic computable general equilibrium (CGE) model is linked to a representative household model in order to capture these effects. The findings indicate that trade liberalisation will cause a significant increase in economic growth. The smallest gains occur under Vietnam’s unilateral trade liberalisation against ASEAN while the largest gains take place when Vietnam extends its liberalisation with the rest of the world. There will be a shift away from primary sectors towards industry-based sectors such as low-tech, intermediate manufacturing and durables. There is also substantial up-skilling of unskilled labour. Combined with the large real returns to capital goods, this will result in significant increases in both capital investments as well as in the accumulation of human capital. In addition, economic growth will induce a fall in poverty rates in Vietnam. Nonetheless, there will also be large increases in the inequality of income, especially in the rural sector. Hence, although growth has lifted a large proportion of households out of poverty, the distributional impacts have been detrimental to the most vulnerable households.

The effect of income inequality has been controversial issue for decades, which researchers have concluded conflicting results. Many researchers have found that income inequality is conducive on economic growth, while others found harmful effect. Hence, this paper investigates the impact of income inequality on economic growth by using the cross sectional analysis. The averaged data from periods of 2002-2006 were used and observations from 90 developed and developing countries were also used. We find that income inequality is negatively associated in economic growth.

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Income inequality has been showing a steady increase for past decades and will be worsened in the future (Piketty, 2014). One of the most important factors to explain the worsening income inequality can be aging. Previous studies on aging focus on its impact on traditional issues such as health, retirement, and economic growth. This study finds the direct relationship between aging and income inequality using the vector autoregressive (VAR) model (Blanchard and Quah, 1989). The VAR model is useful to analyze the long-run response of aging on income inequality. The empirical results will verify the negative impact of aging on income inequality in the U.S. The governmental efforts to reduce the negative impact of aging on health care and pensions could delay the worsening income inequality.

Fintech has been promoted as a tool for financial inclusion and in turn income inequality reduction. While previous research in large has shown a negative relationship between Fintech adaptation and income inequality there are discrepancies regarding whether this is the case across countries. The purpose of this thesis is therefore to answer if financial inclusion through an increase in active Fintech users reduce income inequality and if the relationship differs across regions and income groups. The study is based on cross sectional data for 86 countries, primarily sourced from the World Bank’s Global Findex and World Development Indicators databases. The relationship between Fintech and income inequality is initially estimated through an OLS multiple variable regression, but due to endogeneity issues a 2SLS instrument variable regression is employed. The results find a statistically significant negative relationship between Fintech and income inequality of -0,32 for the entire sample. A similar negative relationship is however only present among higher income countries and in Western Europe and North America, suggesting that Fintech may not be a panacea for income inequality reduction.

Income inequality in Florida is higher than in many states and has been getting worse over time. Inequality has been argued as responsible for a wide-ranging array of economic and social problems, including suppression of lower- and middle-income growth, social fragmentation and separatism, urban sprawl, poor health and mental illnesses, violence, and shortened life expectancy. What explains variance in Florida county income inequality as measured by the GINI coefficient? Bivariate and multivariate weighted least square regressions are conducted for the years 2000 and 2016, and for the change between 2000 and 2016. Three variables achieve statistical significance in all three multivariate models: poverty rate and population density have a positive effect as does educational attainment (although that variable is negative in the 2000 model). Income per capita has a statistically significant positive relationship with inequality in the 2000 model and in the change model. Unemployment rate is statistically significant in the 2016 model and in the change model but has a positive association with the GINI index in the former and a negative association in the latter. Several variables were statistically significant in just one model: cost-burdened housing with a positive relationship to inequality and percentage of minorities with a negative relationship in 2016; and county tax rate with a positive association with inequality in the change model. Conclusions are drawn regarding policy that might be implemented to mitigate worsening inequality in the Sunshine State.

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China has been experiencing a great transition from a socialist collective economy to a market economy since 1978. Before the transition started, the Communist Party had established a socialist collective system with very low levels of income and wealth inequality. With the deepening of the rural reform and the development of rural industry, a large number of people were lifted out of poverty. However, as the people's living standards are rising, disparities in income and wealth are also being accentuated. This thesis's main purpose is to study the extent and determinants of income and wealth inequality in rural China. Based on a sample survey data from Anhui and Sichuan provinces, the thesis answers the following five questions: 1. How much income and wealth inequality is there in rural China in 1994-1995? 2. How has inequality in rural China changed since the reform of 1978? 3. How do the components of income and wealth in China affect the income and wealth distributions? 4. What social and economic factors are most responsible for influencing income and wealth in rural China? 5. How much of the inequality in income and wealth can be accounted for by the factors that predict income and wealth? The main findings of the study are, first, rural income inequality was low in the two provinces in 1994-1995 and wealth inequality was higher than income inequality. Second, in the industrialized Sichuan province, nonagricultural income made a big contribution to income inequality, while in the agricultural Anhui province, agricultural income played an important role in increasing income inequality. Third, education, good land, sufficient labor, and better communication resources are positively related to income and wealth. / Master of Science