The Divide — Jason Hickel

Global Inequality — Harvard University Press

Winner of the Bruno Kreisky Prize, Karl Renner InstitutA Financial Times Best Economics Book of the Year An Economist Best Book of the Year A Livemint Best Book of the YearOne of the world’s leading economists of inequality, Branko Milanovic presents a bold new account of the dynamics that drive inequality on a global scale. Drawing on vast data sets and cutting-edge research, he explains the benign and malign forces that make inequality rise and fall within and among nations. He also reveals who has been helped the most by globalization, who has been held back, and what policies might tilt the balance toward economic justice.“The data [Milanovic] provides offer a clearer picture of great economic puzzles, and his bold theorizing chips away at tired economic orthodoxies.”—The Economist“Milanovic has written an outstanding book…Informative, wide-ranging, scholarly, imaginative and commendably brief. As you would expect from one of the world’s leading experts on this topic, Milanovic has added significantly to important recent works by Thomas Piketty, Anthony Atkinson and François Bourguignon…Ever-rising inequality looks a highly unlikely combination with any genuine democracy. It is to the credit of Milanovic’s book that it brings out these dangers so clearly, along with the important global successes of the past few decades.—Martin Wolf, Financial Times

IDS Annual Lecture 2026 with Jason Hickel - Institute of Development Studies

Join us for the IDS Annual Lecture 2026 delivered by world-renowned political economist and author Prof Jason Hickel.

Rapport du World Inequality Lab : 50 ans après, le nouveau rapport Meadows ?

le World Inequality Lab (WIL) a lancé le « Global Justice Project », un programme destiné à « stimuler la recherche, l'élaboration des

The Missing Institution: A Global Dividend System for the Age of Transformative AI — Digitalist Papers

How do we share prosperity in society if work no longer sits at the center of people’s lives? In this essay, Anna Yelizarova explores one provocative possibility: a “global dividend.” If transformative AI shows little respect for national borders, with effects that spill across countries, then we ne

The myth of catch-up development: trends in core–periphery inequality from 1960 to 2023

The conventional narrative in international development holds that poorer countries are “catching up” with richer countries through the process of capitalist growth. This paper assesses this claim ...

‘Self-termination is most likely’: the history and future of societal collapse

An epic analysis of 5,000 years of civilisation argues that a global collapse is coming unless inequality is vanquished

Doughnut of social and planetary boundaries monitors a world out of balance

The doughnut-shaped framework of social and planetary boundaries (the ‘Doughnut’) provides a concise visual assessment of progress towards the goal of meeting the needs of all people within the means of the living planet1–3. Here we present a renewed Doughnut framework with a revised set of 35 indicators that monitor trends in social deprivation and ecological overshoot over the 2000–2022 period. Although global gross domestic product (GDP) has more than doubled, our median results show a modest achievement in reducing human deprivation that would have to accelerate fivefold to meet the needs of all people by 2030. Meanwhile, the increase in ecological overshoot would have to stop immediately and accelerate nearly two times faster towards planetary boundaries to safeguard Earth-system stability by 2050. Disaggregating these global findings shows that the richest 20% of nations, with 15% of the global population, contribute more than 40% of annual ecological overshoot, whereas the poorest 40% of countries, with 42% of the global population, experience more than 60% of the social shortfall. These trends and inequalities reaffirm the case for overcoming the dependence of nations on perpetual GDP growth4,5 and reorienting towards regenerative and distributive economic activity—within and between nations—that assigns priority to human needs and planetary integrity.

Capitalism, Inequality, and the Myth of Catch-Up Development

Prevailing narratives in international development hold that poorer countries can and will "catch-up" with richer countries through the process of

Exocapitalism: economies with absolutely no limits

There is a touch of destiny with this one. We have real…

Women at Risk: Economic Inequalities in the Age of AI - TWF

As we come to the end of 2024, we are humbled by the impact we have been able to make together to improve the lives of […]

Valuing What Counts: Framework to Progress Beyond Gross Domestic Product: Our Common Agenda Policy Brief 4

Erik Brynjolfsson on Twitter / X

The @nytimes piece today by @ByrneEdsal13590 highlights a concern I share: “If we stay on the current path, the risk of extreme concentration — both economic and political — is very real.”In work with @zhitzig, we ask why AI may shift the balance between dispersed knowledge… pic.twitter.com/10vOTRj4Dq— Erik Brynjolfsson (@erikbryn) March 17, 2026