The paper presents an overview of calculations of global inequality, recently and over the long-run as well as main controversies and political and philosophical implications of the findings. It focuses in particular on the winners and losers of the most recent episode of globalization, from...

The paper provides a detailed review of Thomas Piketty's book"Capital in the 21st century."It focuses on the new contributions of the book, and in particular on its unified treatment of economic growth, functional income distribution, and concentration of personal income. It concludes that...

Why do groups want to secede and where are we most likely to see demands for self-determination? This paper proposes an economic explanation whereby a tradeoff between income and sovereignty implies that, other things being equal, richer regions are more likely to want more autonomy and conflict...

<i>Capital in the Twenty-First Century</i> 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...