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The world is not ‘flat’. Globalization is disequalizing, rewarding the already rich while leaving the poor behind, making rising inequality more, not less likely. There are three reasons. First, the economic gains generated by efficient global markets are not equally shared. Second, global markets are imperfect and many developing countries do not have mechanisms for insuring (poor) people against market failures. Third, trade, migration, and intellectual property regimes at the global level naturally reflect the greater market power of the rich. To mitigate the asymmetric impacts of globalization we need a global polity that can address unequal endowments, whether in the form of lack of educational opportunities or weak institutions.

This article’s indented contribution is to provide novel theoretical insights and empirical observations on “who gets what” in the way of incomes, including wages. The article challenges the conventional wisdom about stratification, especially power and status, as an outcome or function of economic distribution. It posits that income distribution is conditional on pre‐existing social stratification expressed in antecedent differences in class, power, status and related factors.

The paper outlines and examines a social‐institutional conception of income inequality or economic distribution. The fundamental proposition of this conception is that income inequality/distribution is far from being the outcome of the operation of strictly market laws or economic forces but rather one of institutional arrangements or social structures. Of the latter particularly important have shown to be the institutional structure of the economy, particularly labour markets, as well as the degree of democracy of political systems. The results suggest transcending single‐factor economic explanations and predictions of income inequality, as implied in the Kuznets curve and its ramifications, in favour of an alternative multilevel sociological approach.

Mirko Cvetkovic is currently Minister of Finance of the Republic of Serbia. Previously, Mr. Cvetkovic ran his own consulting and advisory firm in Belgrade. Prior to that, he was the Deputy Minister of Economy and the Director of the Serbian Privatization Agency. Mr. Cvetkovic was deeply involved in formulating the country's privatization strategy, its regulations and subsequently in implementing this strategy. As Director of Serbia's Privatization Agency, he was directly responsible for divesting a large number of socially owned companies through auction, tender and restructuring/privatization. Mr. Cvetkovic also had a significant role in drafting the Serbian Bankruptcy Law.

To understand the World Bank's education sector strategy development, an historical perspective of where previous strategies have gone is essential. Rather than building schools the Education Strategy 2020 suggests that it will emphasize the efficiency of the education system and help reform its management, governance and finance. Rather than provide new curriculum, it will try to lay the foundations of an education knowledge base by supporting the use of assessments of academic achievement, both local and cross-national. Countries will be asked to measure their progress against statistical evidence. While none of these changes are entirely new, they all represent progress. In this chapter, the new strategy efforts of the World Bank are examined in relation to the contribution of education to social cohesion, education and corruption, education financing and educational quality and cognitive skills and economic development. This portion of the volume will emerge from a 22-year personal history of working with the World Bank on researching education quality, designing policies to support educational effectiveness and training senior officials worldwide in education policy-related lending strategy.

Latin American countries must prioritize energy efficiency and renewable energies in their energy policies. This has been debated for the past few decades. However, it is impossible to deny that energy efficiency and renewable energies have significant potential to mitigate the adverse effects of ever-increasing energy consumption induced by economic growth and the transformation of societies toward more energy-intensive models. This chapter identifies how sustainable energy policies could be considered successful in various Latin American economies through an active review and comparison of traditional energy models and their transition and respective consequences. The chapter concludes that there are national energy plans in countries in the region with a sustainable approach, and that clean energy and renewable sources have great potential. But it is also concluded that there is still a long way to go concerning legislation and legal frameworks.