The Research On The Influence Of Income Distribution Inequality On Export

The relationship between international trade and income distribution inequality is a focus in economists. There are many studies about the impact from international trade to income distribution, but few about the influence of income distribution to trade, especially to export. By theoretical analysis and empirical analysis, this paper studies the problem about the influence of income distribution inequality to export trade from the demand perspective.This paper establishes a theoretical model based on previous researches and extensive analysis. In the model, there are two sectors:the homogeneous products sector and the vertical differentiated products sector; there are two kinds of consumers:high-income consumers and low-income consumers. With the assumption of consumers' non-homothetic preferences, this paper analyzes the impact of the income distribution to consumers' preferences, then to the demand of the whole economy. By connecting income distribution to export from the demand perspective, how income distribution inequality influences export is explained. This paper uses 39 countries' panel data from 1981 to 2007 to make a regression to examine the theoretical model, and the data of China from 1980 to 2010 to make a Granger causality test to study the situation in China.The theoretical conclusion is that:assuming that high-income countries specialize high-quality differentiated products and low-income countries specialize low-quality differentiated products, the income distribution inequality would promote the export in high-income countries, while decrease the export in low-income countries; countries specialization being not assumed, the income distribution inequality would promote the export of high-quality differentiated products and decrease the export of low-quality differentiated products. The empirical analysis verifies the theoretical conclusion in high-income countries well, but do not support the conclusion in low-income countries well. It also express that the income distribution inequality would promote the export trade in China. This paper describes the transmission mechanism. As to the income distribution inequality in China, this paper also gives some policy suggestions.