The Effect of Income Inequality on Demand Function of Imports of Consumption Goods in Iran

Income distribution describes how people share of national income and degree of inequality between people in society. Increasing income inequality leads to change in the composition of domestic and imported consumption goods. Because inequality increases will be increase the purchasing power of the rich and to increase the demand for consumption goods with high elasticity that is mainly imported luxury. Therefore this study investigated the effects of income inequality on Iranian imports of consumption goods during the period of 1969-2012. In this regard using by vector auto regressive (VAR) approach was examined relationship between imports of consumption goods and GDP, real exchange rate and income inequality. Estimation results show that imports of consumption goods with interruptions has had the most effect on the import of consumption goods. Also the real exchange rate is expected to have reverse relationship with imports of consumption goods. GDP also has a positive and significant effect on imports of consumption goods and variable of income inequality also has a positive effect on imports of consumption goods. In fact, by reducing income inequality and improving the income distribution will be increase tendency of use of consumption goods of domestic product, and will be reduced the amount of imports of consumption goods.