Date of Award
Spring 2022
Degree Type
Restricted to Claremont Colleges Dissertation
Degree Name
Political Science and Economics, PhD interfield
Program
School of Social Science, Politics, and Evaluation
Advisor/Supervisor/Committee Chair
Feng Yi
Dissertation or Thesis Committee Member
Graham Bird
Dissertation or Thesis Committee Member
Thomas Willett
Terms of Use & License Information
Rights Information
© 2022 Fengyuan Zhang
Subject Categories
Economics
Abstract
This dissertation contributes to the discussion of the theoretical relationship between FDI and income inequality by arguing that the relationship depends on the political system. Focusing on the region of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), this dissertation uses a fixed-effects model and a panel data set and finds that the positive correlation between FDI and income inequality measured in Gini Coefficient is magnified in countries with a high level of democracy of LAC during 1991-2017. Furthermore, in the following quintile income share analysis, it is found that the effects for the 5th quintile are opposite to the 3rd and the 4th quintiles, suggesting that the wealthiest 20% of the population in these countries benefited from FDI and the political system magnified this effect.
ISBN
9798557036481
Recommended Citation
Zhang, Fengyuan. (2022). Foreign direct investment, democracy, and income inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean from 1991 to 2017. CGU Theses & Dissertations, 417. https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgu_etd/417.
