Why national and international equality matter and what we can do to ensure a fairer world In The Globalization of Inequality, distinguished economist and policymaker François Bourguignon examines the complex and paradoxical links between a vibrant world economy that has raised the living standard of over half a billion people in emerging nations such as China, India, and Brazil, and the exponentially increasing inequality within countries. Exploring globalization's role in the evolution of inequality, Bourguignon takes an original and truly international approach to the decrease in inequality between nations, the increase in inequality within nations, and the policies that might moderate inequality’s negative effects. Demonstrating that in a globalized world it becomes harder to separate out the factors leading to domestic or international inequality, Bourguignon examines each trend through a variety of sources, and looks at how these inequalities sometimes balance each other out or reinforce one another. Factoring in the most recent economic crisis, Bourguignon investigates why inequality in some countries has dropped back to levels that have not existed for several decades, and he asks if these should be considered in the context of globalization or if they are in fact specific to individual nations. Ultimately, Bourguignon argues that it will be up to countries in the developed and developing world to implement better policies, even though globalization limits the scope for some potential redistributive instruments. An informed and original contribution to the current debates about inequality, this book will be essential reading for anyone who is interested in the future of the world economy.

Despite strong interest in the role of institutions; methods of operation, underlying political forces and their precise nature are still misunderstood. Partial analysis of specific aspects of public interventions simplified historical examples, or rough cross-country relationships tend to be the main guides to policy recommendations. Along with four in-depth country studies, published in companion volumes, Institutional Challenges at the Early Stages of Development gives a thorough review of the experiences of South Korea and Taiwan, offering a new perspective for identifying critical institutional issues. Including those related to state-business relations and the economic structure, and its transformation, analytical tools and concept are provided to help diagnose important hurdles at the early stage of a country's development. This title is also available as Open Access.

A companion to the bestseller, The Impact of Economic Policies on Poverty and Income Distribution, this title deals with theoretical challenges and cutting-edge macro-micro linkage models. The authors compare the predictive and analytical power of various macro-micro linkage techniques using the traditional RHG approach as a benchmark to evaluate standard policies, such as, a typical stabilization package and a typical structural reform policy.

The authors' simulations support the view that stabilization packages that do not have specific components targeted to the poor will redistribute income in a way that, although transitory, is likely to permanently harm those below the poverty line, in terms of things like nutrition, health, and education.

Globalization is, in some respects, a centuries-old phenomenon. Only now, however, are we examining which aspects of the current wave are old and which are new and the effects of these on poverty and inequality in the world. Furthermore, it is difficult to be sure whether the poor economic performance of some countries (notably in sub-Saharan Africa) is due to their having been insufficiently open to the world economy, or whether they lacked the institutions and capacities (such as in human capital) that would have enabled them to benefit from such opportunities and embrace globalization successfully. CEPR's new Policy Paper analyses how various institutions, including corporations, national governments and the many institutions of civil society, have responded or potentially could respond to these developments.

Abstract: Bourguignon, Ferreira, and Leite develop a microeconometric method to account for differences across distributions of household income. Going beyond the determination of earnings in labor markets, they also estimate statistical models for occupational choice and for conditional distributions of education, fertility, and nonlabor incomes. The authors import combinations of estimated parameters from these models to simulate counterfactual income distributions. This allows them to decompose differences between functionals of two income distributions (such as inequality or poverty measures) into shares because of differences in the structure of labor market returns (price effects), differences in the occupational structure, and differences in the underlying distribution of assets (endowment effects). The authors apply the method to the differences between the Brazilian income distribution and those of Mexico and the United States, and find that most of Brazil's excess income inequality is due to underlying inequalities in the distribution of two key endowments: access to education and to sources of nonlabor income, mainly pensions. This paper is a product of the Research Advisory Staff. The authors may be contacted at fbourguignon@@worldbank.org, fferreira@@econ.puc-rio.br or phil@@econ.puc-rio.br.

Reviews techniques and tools that can be used to evaluate the poverty and distributional impact of economic policy choices. This title describes the most robust techniques and tools, from the simplest to the most complex, and aims to identify best practices. It also addresses an evaluation technique and its applications.

This book is about how the distribution of income changes during the process of income development. Understanding development and the process of poverty reduction requires understanding not only how total income grows but also how its distribution behaves over time. The authors propose a decomposition of differences in entire distributions of household incomes, shedding new light on the powerful, and often conflicting, forces that underpin the changes in poverty and inequality that accompany the process of economic development. This approach is applied to three East Asian countries -- Indonesia, Malaysia, and China -- and to four in Latin America -- Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico.

This volume is a comprehensive collection of critical essays on The Taming of the Shrew, and includes extensive discussions of the play's various printed versions and its theatrical productions. Aspinall has included only those essays that offer the most influential and controversial arguments surrounding the play. The issues discussed include gender, authority, female autonomy and unruliness, courtship and marriage, language and speech, and performance and theatricality.