On the Ambiguous Economic Freedom-Inequality Relationship

Previous research on the relationship between capitalistic institutions and income inequality has produced mixed results. We provide a short survey of this literature, identifying potential causes for this empirical heterogeneity. Next, we replicate the results from two of the relevant studies using six alternative measures of income inequality for an updated dataset of up to 112 countries over the period 1970-2010. Most notably, we use the...