全世界在經濟自由化思潮主導下，金融自由化已經成為世界各國重要經濟政策之一，1980年代和1990年代，許多國家開始以金融自由化為目標，有許多研究顯示金融自由化會促進經濟成長，但似乎不是每個國家都可以將金融自由化所帶來的收益均分給社會，本文使用Papaioannou and Siourounis (2008) 所使用的差異中之差異模型 (difference-in-difference)，探討金融自由化對所得分配的影響，金融自由化指標則使用Bekaert et al. (2005) 所統計的新興市場的金融、經濟、政策重要事件之年表 (A Chronology of Important Financial, Economic and Political Events in Emerging Markets) 所建構的虛擬變數，研究期間自1980年至2004年，樣本國包含22個先進國家及46個開發中國家，共68國。實證結果顯示 :
(一)金融自由化會擴大所得分配不均，再加入了其他的控制變數後，並不影響主要結果。 (二)將國家區分為先進國家及開發中國家作分析，發現金融自由化並不會對先進國家的所得分配造成影響，但是金融自由化卻會擴大開發中國家的所得分配。 Under the wave of worldwide economic liberalization, financial liberalization has become a major economic instrument to stimulate economic performance. In the 1980s and 1990s, many countries have undergone a series of financial liberalizations and some empirical studies have shown that financial liberalization may promote economic growth. However, it seems that not everyone within the liberalizing countries can equally share the benefits from financial liberalization. With this concern, we use Paioannou and Siourounis’s (2008) difference-in-difference model to further estimate the impact of financial liberalization on income distribution. The financial liberalization indicator we used is a dummy variable constructed based on the dating information of equity market openness from Bekaert et al. (2005). The data used in this study contains 68 countries, with 22 developed countries and 46 developing countries, over the 1980-2004 period. Our main findings are as follows:
1.Regardless in the unconditional or conditional cases, financial liberalization, measured as equity market openness, seems to worsen income distributions.
2.When dividing the sample into advanced and developing countries, we find that financial liberalization will worsen income distribution in developing country group but not developed countries.
