News and Commentary

An excerpt from Branko Milanovic's latest book, The World Under Capitalism: Observations on Economics Politics, History, and Culture, a 2025 collection of his essays from the last decade.

Branko Milanovic discusses his new book, The Great Global Transformation: National Market Liberalism in a Multipolar World, with Kirsten Sehnbruch at an event hosted by LSE's International Inequalities Institute. 

Manuel Schechtl, a 2022–2024 Stone Center postdoctoral scholar, discusses his Stone Center Working Paper, which combines two new sources of data to compare the extent of democratic backsliding in all 50 U.S. states.

Affiliated Scholar Maximilian Kasy discusses his new book, The Means of Prediction: How AI Really Works (and Who Benefits), which offers a convincing argument for democratic control over AI’s objectives.

Artificial Intelligence is developing at breakneck speed, causing much anxiety about how our society and daily lives may change in the not-too-distant future. Top of mind for many: jobs. Daron Acemoglu, Paul Krugman, Danielle Li, and Zeynep Tufekci bring the speculation down to earth in a panel moderated by Steven Greenhouse.

Kenworthy, a professor of sociology and the Yankelovich Chair in Social Thought at the University of California, San Diego, discusses the findings in his latest book, which examines whether reducing income inequality would have beneficial effects on living standards, health, economic opportunity, the functioning of democracy, and subjective measures of happiness.

In the West, China is easily misunderstood. Is it capitalist or communist, an adversary or a vital economic partner, a modernized nation or a retrograde regime? Yong Cai, Qin Gao, Rongbin Han, and Branko Milanovic, address these questions in a panel moderated by John Torpey.

Marai Hayes, one of the Stone Center's new postdoctoral scholars, discusses her research projects, how she became interested in the connections between health and inequality, and the likely impacts of recent health policy changes at the federal level.

Leslie McCall delivers a keynote address at "The III at 10: New Directions in Inequality Research," a two-day conference celebrating the 10th anniversary of the London School of Economics' International Inequalities Institute.

Why is capital so concentrated and why do so few have it? Stone Center Senior Scholar and GC CUNY Research Professor Branko Milanovic discusses capital income and how it functions under new capitalism in this final post of his three-part series.