The talk will discuss the evolution in global inequality over the past two centuries, with the focus on the most recent 2008-2018 estimates and will draw political implications of the important changes that are taking place in global distribution of income.
In particular, it will focus on the rise of the middle class in Asia, income stagnation of the rich countries’ middle classes, reshuffling of global income positions, and the emergence of the global plutocracy. The effects of covid, the war between Russia and Ukraine and trade tensions between US and China will also be addressed although the data on each of them are scarce.
Speaker:
Branko Milanovic is a Research Professor at the Graduate Center, City Universityof New York(CUNY), Senior Scholar at the Stone Center on Socio-economic Inequality at CUNY, andVisiting Professor at the Institute for International Inequalitiesat the London School of Economics. Milanovic’s main area of work is income inequality, in individual countries and globally,including in pre-industrial societies. He has published articles on these topics in The Economic Journal, Review of Economics and Statistics, Nature, and Journal of Economic Literature among others. He is the author of Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization (2016) which received the 2017 Bruno Kreisky Prize and 2018 Hans Matthöfer Prize. Branko was awarded (jointly with Mariana Mazzucato) the 2018 Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Knowledge. His most recent book Capitalism, Alone was published in 2019 and was translated into fifteen languages.
Discussant
Francisco H. G. Ferreira is the Amartya Sen Professor of Inequality Studies at the London School of Economics, where he is also Director of the International Inequalities Institute. Francisco is an economist working on the measurement, causes and consequences of inequality and poverty in developing countries, with a special focus on Latin America. His work has been published widely and been awarded various prizes, including the Richard Stone Prize in Applied Econometrics and the Kendrick Prize from the International Association for Research in Income and Wealth.
Chair
Duncan Green is Senior Strategic Adviser at Oxfam GB, Professor in Practice in International Development at the London School of Economics, honorary Professor of International Development at Cardiff University and a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Development Studies. He is author of How Change Happens (OUP, October 2016) and From Poverty to Power: How Active Citizens and Effective States can Change the World (Oxfam International, 2008, second edition 2012).
This talk is part of the Cutting Edge Issues in Development Thinking & Practice 2022 series, a high-profile lecture series run by the Department of International Development at LSE and organised by Dr Laura Mann and Professor in Practice Duncan Green.
The Department of International Development promotes interdisciplinary postgraduate teaching and research on processes of social, political and economic development and change.
Twitter Hashtag for this series: #CuttingEdge2022