The Global Distribution of Income and the Politics of Globalisation - embedded liberal capitalism [A

Speaker(s): Dr María Ana Lugo, Professor Branko Milanovic, Dr Paul Segal | The panel discuss the evolution of the global distribution of income and political implications, highlighting endogenous forces of rising inequality in liberal capitalism embedded in globalisation. The last quarter century of globalisation has witnessed the largest reshuffle of global incomes since the Industrial Revolution. The global Gini index declined by about 2 points over the twenty-five year period 1988-2013, while within the global distribution of income three changes stand out. First, China has graduated from the bottom ranks, creating an important global “middle” class that has transformed a twin-peaked 1988 global distribution into the single-peaked distribution we observe today. The main “winners” were country-deciles that in 1988 were around the median of the global income distribution, 90% of them representing people in Asia. Second, the “losers” were the country-deciles that in 1988 were around th