New data derived directly from household surveys are used to examine the effects of globalization on income distribution in poor and rich countries. The article looks at the impact of openness and of direct foreign investment on relative income shares across the entire income distribution. It...

Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty provides a unified theory of the functioning of the capitalist economy by linking theories of economic growth and functional and personal income distributions. It argues, based on the long-run historical data series, that the forces of...

Suppose that all people in the world are allocated only two characteristics over which they have (almost) no control: country of residence and income distribution within that country. Assume further that there is no migration. We show that more than one-half of variability in income of world...

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...

Using for the first time household survey data from 26 post-Communist countries, covering the period 1990-2005, this paper examines correlates of unprecedented increases in inequality registered by most of the economies. The analysis shows, after controlling for country fixed effects and type of...

The authors develop and implement a method for measuring the frequency of changes in power among distinct leaders and ideologically distinct parties that is comparable across political systems. The authors find that more frequent alternation in power is associated with the emergence of better...

Suppose that all people in the world are allocated only two characteristics: country where they live and income class within that country. Assume further that there is no migration. This paper shows that 90 percent of variability in people's global income position (percentile in world income...

Using national income and expenditure distribution data from 119 countries, the authors decompose total income inequality between the individuals in the world, by continent and by region(countries grouped by income level). They use a Gini decomposition that allows for an exact breakdown (without...

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...