Most analysts of the modern Latin American economy have held the pessimistic belief in historical persistence -- they believe that Latin America has always had very high levels of inequality, and that it's the Iberian colonists' fault. Thus, modern analysts see today a more unequal Latin America...

Did independence push Latin America down a growth-inequality trade-off? During the late colonial decades, the region completed two centuries of growth unmatched anywhere and inequality reached spectacular heights. During the half century after insurgency and independence, inequality fell steeply...

Most analysts of the modern Latin American economy hold to a pessimistic belief in historical persistence -- they believe that Latin America has always had very high levels of inequality, suggesting it will be hard for modern social policy to create a more egalitarian society. This paper argues...

Most analysts of the modern Latin American economy hold to a pessimistic belief in historical persistence -- they believe that Latin America has always had very high levels of inequality, suggesting it will be hard for modern social policy to create a more egalitarian society. This paper argues...

In the first global century before 1914, trade and especially migration had profound effects on both low-wage, labor abundant Europe and the high-wage, labor scarce New World. Those global forces contributed to a reduction in unskilled labor scarcity in the New World and to a rise in unskilled...

The world has seen two globalization booms over the past two centuries, and one bust. The first global century ended with World War I and the second started at the end of World War II, while the years in between were ones of anti-global backlash. This lecture reports what we know about the...

If we have learned anything from the recent outpouring of empirical growth equations is that life is far too complex to expect unconditional' convergence among all countries and at" all times. This fact motivates two questions. First, why has it taken economists so long to learn" the same lesson...

The late 19th and the late 20th century shared more than simply globalization and convergence. Globalization also seems to have had the same impact on income distribution: in the late 19th century, inequality rose in rich countries and fell in poor countries; according to Adrian Wood, the same...

"Is inequality largely the result of the Industrial Revolution? Or, were pre-industrial incomes and life expectancies as unequal as they are today? For want of sufficient data, these questions have not yet been answered. This paper infers inequality for 14 ancient, pre-industrial societies using...

How much of the good growth performance in Latin America between 1870 and 1913 can be assigned to the forces of globalization? Why was industrialization so weak? Why was inequality on the rise? This paper offers an answer to these questions. It starts by exploring the disadvantages associated...