INEQUALITY AND TRUST: NEW EVIDENCE FROM PANEL DATA
利用跨国面板数据，通过控制国家固定效应和使用技术变革作为工具变量，发现收入不平等对普遍信任有负向因果效应，且该效应在发达国家中更为显著。
We estimate the causal link from income inequality to generalized trust by reconsidering the country‐level evidence on this issue. First, we exploit the panel dimension of the data, thus controlling for any country unobservable time‐invariant variables, and find a negative relationship between the two variables that holds only for developed countries. Second, we focus on these advanced economies and provide instrumental variable estimates using the predicted exposure to technological change as an exogenous driver of inequality. According to our findings, the negative causal effect of inequality on trust is even larger than that coming from ordinary least squares estimation. We also provide new insights on the effects of different dimensions of inequality, exploiting measures of both static inequality—such as the Gini index and top income shares—and dynamic inequality—proxied by intergenerational income mobility.