Editor: Branko Milanovic
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Date: 2012
Abstract:
The selection of writings included in this book will address most of the issues linked with globalization and income inequality. The writings on these two topics, and on the intersection of them, are so vast that any selection necessarily involves a lot of personal judgment and weighing of pros and cons for the inclusion of each piece. All articles included here are essentially empirical. In some cases, they combine theory, either implicitly or explicitly, with empirics – but there are no ‘theory only’ articles. Reasons are twofold: for some issues discussed here, there is no ‘pure’ theory, as opposed to empirical research; and in other cases, ‘pure theory’ has become discredited (particularly after the onset of the Great Recession) due to its detachment from real life and rather extravagant assumptions – things that at times liken it to metaphysics rather than to what a social science like economics should be. I have divided the readings into four groups which, in my opinion, best encapsulate the complexity of the relationship between globalization and income inequality. Readings in Part I focus on the past: Globalization I and changes in within-national and global inequality in the 19th and the first half of the 20th century. In Part II, we move to the contemporary period which may be of greater interest to the majority of readers. The readings there review and analyze remarkable changes in within-national inequalities that have occurred across globe, in developed Western economies, as well as in China and Russia, India and Latin America. The articles span the period that can be broadly associated with the unchallenged dominance of neoliberal policies, from the ascent to power of Margaret Thatcher, Deng Xiaoping and Ronald Reagan in respectively Great Britain, China and the United States, to the global financial crisis. That period of some 30 years witnessed the rise and the decline of the neoliberal view of the world, and of the economic policies associated with it which in turn had a tremendous impact on economic inequalities. In Part III, we look at an issue, particularly germane to that period, which attracted a lot of attention: how did greater openness, reflected in increased international trade, direct foreign investments and outsourcing, affect inequality within nations—those that received more foreign investments, traded more or were beneficiaries of outsourcing and those that did not? Finally, Part IV ‘wraps up’ the issue of globalization and inequality by looking at its most general manifestation: global inequality, that is, economic inequality between (what some authors in a hopeful anticipation of the times to come), call ‘global citizens’.
Link: Globalization and Inequality
Link: Introduction (PDF) by Branko Milanovic