Influence of the fourth industrial revolution on divergence and convergence of economic inequality for various countries

Abstract

The choice between economic efficiency and social equity has become a key objection in economic development, since in the current economic system, which has become close to the Pareto optimum, the achievement of both of these goals is mutually exclusive. Further balancing between these goals is possible only with a fundamental change of current system of economic relations and getting access to new curves of production capabilities, which may become quite real within development of Industry 4.0 and 6th technological wave. Nevertheless, nobody can predict the social impact of Industry 4.0 on society, which in the context of future technological changes transforms into Society 4.0. The purpose of this paper is to conduct a cluster analysis of countries inequality due to IT development. We researched impact of gross capital formation, research and development expenditure to create innovations, intellectual property and high-technology exports on inequality of countries using principal component analysis based on open data for 2012 – 2015. 2 main clusters of 45 countries were identified which have convergence and divergence attributes due to IT development. It was also revealed the countries with inequalities in ensuring economic efficiency and social equity due to other reasons which are not connected with IT development.