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In large parts of the world, income inequality has been rising in recent decades. Other regions have experienced declining trends in income inequality. This raises the question of which mechanisms underlie contrasting observed trends in income inequality around the globe. To address this research question in an empirical analysis at the aggregate level, we examine a global sample of 73 countries between 1981 and 2010, studying a broad set of drivers to investigate their interaction and influence on income inequality. Within this broad approach, we are interested in the heterogeneity of income inequality determinants across world regions and along the income distribution. Our findings indicate the existence of a small set of systematic drivers across the global sample of countries. Declining labour income shares and increasing imports from high-income countries significantly contribute to increasing income inequality, while taxation and imports from low-income countries exert countervailing effects. Our study reveals the region-specific impacts of technological change, financial globalisation, domestic financial deepening and public social spending. Most importantly, we do not find systematic evidence of education’s equalising effect across high- and low-income countries. Our results are largely robust to changing the underlying sources of income Ginis, but looking at different segments of income distribution reveals heterogeneous effects.

This paper explores the work of the educational theorist Gert Biesta in a setting outside of the context where it was originally developed. It aims to address how Biesta’s approach can help educators and policy makers question the philosophical underpinnings of education in the UAE and thereby start a conversation that is currently absent in this context. The paper comprises three elements: first, an overview of Biesta’s educational theory is given with a focus on ‘subjectification’ and his self-titled “pedagogy of interruption”. Secondly and in brief, I use Biesta’s framework of educational dimensions to analyse the philosophy underlying education in the United Arab Emirates using published government documents and media sources. Thirdly, I report a small-scale qualitative analysis of a specific educational space, three General Studies Courses in a UAE tertiary institution, to investigate the ‘risky’ possibilities involved in implementing a pedagogy of interruption. I find that despite a dominant policy discourse that discounts subjectification, there are significant opportunities for students to develop a strong sense of self. These opportunities are created by a small but strongly motivated group of teachers and taken up, on the whole enthusiastically, by students. However, my assertions are limited by a number of challenges which warrant further research. This paper hopes to provide a meaningful contribution to the limited discussion regarding the aims and expectations of education in the Middle East, and finds a pertinent philosophical grounding for liberal studies teaching in a tertiary context. As such the paper will be of value both to policy and decision makers in the Middle East and to teachers and trainers who teach in multi-cultural and international contexts.

This study aims to present the Chinese entrepreneurial environment and explore Chinese tertiary students’ online-startup motivation on live streaming platforms. Based on the COM-B behaviour changing theory, this paper discovers various influencing factors from environmental opportunity and personal capability aspects. It analyses their effects under the cooperative system established among official departments, industries and universities. Meanwhile, considering social and cultural control, it also refers to the uncertainty-avoidance dimension from the Hofstede cultural theory and re-evaluates its influence on Chinese tertiary students’ online-startup motivation.

The authors analyse 474 responses from online questionnaires through partial least squares path modelling and variance-based structural equation modelling. The paper claims that environmental opportunity and personal capability factors positively affect students’ online-startup motivation, but uncertainty-avoidance thinking plays a negative role. The study also measures the importance-performance map analysis to explore additional findings and discuss managerial implications.

Both platform support and official department support positively impact Chinese tertiary students’ online-startup motivation and entrepreneurial skills learned from universities are beneficial for them to build online-startup confidence. Meanwhile, influenced by the cooperative system implemented among official departments, industries and universities, official department support positively affects platform support and entrepreneurial skills. Conversely, influenced by Chinese traditional Confucian culture, uncertainty-avoidance thinking negatively affects tertiary students’ online-startup motivation.

This paper demonstrates the analysis of Chinese tertiary students’ online-startup motivation drawing on the COM-B behaviour changing and Hofstede cultural theories. Specifically, this study divides influencing factors into three specific aspects as follows: environmental opportunity, personal capability and social and cultural control. Unlike existing research applying traditional research models, the combination of the COM-B behaviour changing theory and the Hofstede cultural theory could be conducive to making the research model reflect influencing factors and present their different relationships.