By Jie Wei Chia

Existing literature on the relationship between income inequality and coup d’états focus on how the former cause the latter. No research has yet been done on how coup d’états affect income inequality after their occurrence. This study uses cross–country panel data and fixed effects with instrumental variables models to examine the impact of successful armed coups, successful unarmed coups, failed armed coups and failed unarmed coups. I find that, on average, none of these coups have a significant impact on the Gini coefficient and the income share of the poorest quintile of a population relative to the richest quintile, save for successful armed coups when the sub–sample of data from 1991–2013 was used.

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Advisor: Duncan Thomas, Timur Kuran | JEL Codes: D7, D74 | Tagged: Coups, Inequality, Political Economy