LAUSR

Abstract Previous studies that assessed the impact of income volatility (as a measure of economic uncertainty) on income inequality relied upon either cross-sectional data or panel data, mostly due to the lack of sufficient time-series observations. Now that enough time-series observations are available for many countries, we revisit the issue and assess the possible asymmetric effects of income volatility on income inequality in each of the 41 countries. We find short-run asymmetric effects in almost all countries, short-run impact asymmetric effects in 20 countries, and long-run asymmetric effects in 21 countries. There was much less support when we engaged only in symmetric analysis.