The Relationships between Economic and Political Liberalization and the Kuznets Curve

Abstract

Per capita income and income distribution are defined as classical Kuznets curve. From this view, the relationship between per capita income and income distribution is controlled variables and studies that take environmental pollution, financial depth, or trade volume into account are widely seen in the literature according to the study objectives. Respectively, these applications can be named first as environmental Kuznets and secondly as financial Kuznets. As parallel to this view, the studies that emphasize the relationship between export and income distribution are common in the literature, representing economic liberalization. It is also worth noting that political liberalization whether political rights or civil liberties, supports the trend that emerges like the Kuznets’ curve, according to the level of development of the countries. In this study, when the level of national development is taken into consideration, the relationships between per capita income and economic and political liberalization practices have been tested with econometric tests, whether they follow a classical, environmental, commercial or financial Kuznets-like situation. In addition to the classical, environmental, commercial and financial Kuznets, the existence of the “political liberalization practices” will be discussed in the literature in order to overlap the theoretical expectations and the results of this study. In the analysis of the 2012 horizontal cross-section of the country group with the highest Gini coefficient, Kuznets' “inverse U” view is reflected in both commercial and political liberalization dimensions.