近二、三十年來，經濟學家主要致力於討論所得不均和經濟成長之間的影響關係。早期的學者主要研究庫茲涅茨倒U曲線，此倒U曲線是為探討經濟成長對於所得不均的影響關係；然而，近期研究將此兩因素的探討關係作對調，是為探討所得不均對於經濟成長是否存在顯著的影響。此外，所得重分配政策亦在此所得不均與經濟成長關係中扮演一影響要素，但在之前較少研究涉及此方面。因此，在此篇研究中不僅探討所得不均的影響關係，亦討論所得重分配對於經濟成長的影響，另外也兼論政體制度所扮演的角色。此研究主要的結果如下：壹、所得不均對於經濟成長有負面顯著的影響效果，而所得重分配是為正面顯著的影響效果。貳、在民主政體中所得不均（所得重分配）對於經濟成長為負面（正面）顯著的影響效果；然而在獨裁政體中僅有所得不均為負面顯著影響效果。參、當加入時間變數以控制景氣波動，發現主要的結果並無太大的改變，表示此研究結果是穩建的。

The relations between income inequality and economic growth have long been discussed by economists. While the Kuznets inverted-U used to be the focus of the discussions, in recent years there is an evident trend toward investigating whether inequality retards economic growth. The redistributive policy is also an important element in the inequality-growth nexus, but it is less touched in the existing literature. As a result, I simultaneously study the impact of income inequality and income redistribution on economic growth in this thesis. Most importantly, a country’s political institution is taken into account in the analysis, given that the political institution might play an important role in determining the impact of income inequality, redistribution, on economic growth. The major findings of this thesis are: (1) In general, income inequality has a negative impact on economic growth while redistribution has positive influence on economic growth. (2) In democratic countries inequality (redistribution) is negatively (positively) and significantly associated with economic growth; however, in autocratic countries only inequality has negative and significant impact on growth. (3) There are no significant changes in the main results when various time dummy variables are added to control the fluctuations from business cycles.

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