International Trade and Global Income Inequality

In the popular media, trade is quite often being used as a whipping boy and blamed for increased worldwide inequality. Is trade actually a source of greater income inequality around the world? What does the data show? Is there any reason to suspect trade as a major villain on the international scene? Does the data show that there is correlation between trade and inequality? To address these questions, this paper uses regression analysis to investigate whether there is any association between either the amount or the spread of international trade and two important dimensions of global income inequality, namely ? income inequality between and within nations.