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Purpose – Ascertaining the extent to which the generalized decline in union density, as well as the erosion in centralized bargaining structures and developments in other labor institutions, have contributed to rising within-country inequality.

Methodology – Econometric analysis of a newly developed dataset combining information on industrial relations and labor law, various dimensions of globalization, and controls for demand and supply of skilled labor for 51 Advanced, Central and Eastern European, Latin American, and Asian countries from the late 1980s to the early 2000s, followed by an analysis of 16 advanced countries over a longer time frame (from the late 1970s to the early 2000s).

Findings – In contrast to previous research, which finds labor institutions to be important determinants of more egalitarian wage or income distributions, the chapter finds that trade unionism and collective bargaining are no longer significantly associated with within-country inequality, except in the Central and Eastern European countries. These findings are interpreted as the result of trade unionism operating under more stringent structural constraints than in the past, partly as a result of globalization trends. In addition, despite much talk about welfare state crisis, welfare states, historically the result of labor's power and mobilization capacity, still play an important redistributive role, at least in advanced countries.

Practical implications – Union attempts at equalizing incomes by compressing market earnings seem ineffective and impractical in the current day and age. Unions should seek to increase the workers’ skill levels and promote an egalitarian transformation of the workplace. This type of “supply-side” egalitarianism is not a new strategy for unions, but is very much embedded in the unions’ DNA.

Whether by direct or indirect action (or by inaction), multinational enterprises (MNEs) can have both a positive and a negative effect on within-country social and economic inequality. This paper aims to comment on this multifaceted relationship between MNEs and within-country inequality.

Given the absence of either robust theory or evidence in the neglected realm of MNEs and within-countries inequalities, this paper offers some general observations, highlights some of the key issues and illustrates possible avenues for future research studies.

The capacity of MNEs to upgrade economic activity in the host country is a key policy objective. MNEs have arguably contributed to reducing income inequalities between countries. However, the limited evidence available suggests that the gains of FDI are rarely evenly distributed within recipient countries, and many of the underlying dynamics need further investigation.

The authors broaden the engagement with inequality beyond income levels, as this is just one aspect of inequality that shapes or impedes human development. They believe it is necessary – for both MNEs and policymakers – to have a more nuanced understanding of how, and under what circumstances, the presence of MNEs affects inequality in host economies.

This paper relates the large literature on inequality (going beyond the mainstream focus on income inequality) to the mainstream understanding of MNE-assisted development.

This paper aims to estimate the global income distribution during the nineties using limited information. In a first stage, we obtain national income distributions considering a model with two parameters. In particular, we propose to use the so-called Lamé distributions, which are curved versions of the Sigh-Maddala and Dagum distributions. The main feature of this family is that they represent parsimonious models which can fit income data adequately with just two parameters and whose Lorenz curves are characterized by only one parameter. In a second stage, global and regional distributions are derived from a finite mixture of these families using population shares. We test the validity of the model, comparing it with other two-parameter families. Our estimates of different inequality measures suggest that global inequality presents a decreasing pattern mainly driven by the fall of the differences across countries during the course of the study period that offsets the increase in disparities within countries.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse income inequality for a sample of 14 European countries and their composite regions using data from the Cambridge Econometrics regional dataset from 1980 to 2009. The purpose of the paper is to provide insight into the dynamics of regional and national cohesion among the EU‐14 countries studied.

Initially, inequality is decomposed using the Theil coefficient into between and within country inequality to assess the extent to which convergence has occurred. To investigate the underlying causes of the changes in inequality, the Theil coefficient is further decomposed to assess the contribution of productivity and employment‐population ratio differentials to inequality.

The results indicate that while between‐country inequality has declined, within‐country inequality has increased by approximately 50 percent. Subsequent decomposition indicates that while productivity levels among regions have converged, the employment‐population ratios have diverged substantially driving increasing levels of inequality. This suggests that while EU cohesion policies have reduced productivity inequalities they have had little effect in stimulating convergence of employment‐population ratios across regions.

The paper argues that national priorities, particularly in the context of the current European economic crisis, are likely to hinder European Union level policies to reduce income inequality at a regional level. This may result in further increases in regional inequality among European regions.

This paper's main contribution is to highlight how national convergence can lead to regional divergence being overlooked. The value of the paper is that it provides policy insights, based on empirical evidence, for European cohesion policy.

The paper aims to assess to what extent the general trends with regard to world inequality can be explained by rising international economic integration, technological change and (labour market) institutions.

Based on the existing literature, the stylized facts on inequality between and within nations, globalisation and technological change are reviewed, after which the empirical evidence of the impact of international trade and poverty in developing countries is discussed.

The paper argues that despite substantial theoretical and empirical contributions, so far no straightforward conclusions are warranted. However, historical evidence suggests that, from a policy perspective, the rise in inequality – witnessed in a large number of developing as well as developed countries – ought to be acknowledged and tackled to avoid a possible backlash against globalisation. The inconclusiveness that empirical work on inequality and its determinants offers, might be explained by substantial differences across countries in their institutional framework.

The importance of interactions between institutions, technology and globalisation and their impact on world inequality is still not very well understood. The paper is an appeal for investigating more these interactions.

Does education still serve as a great equalizer today? Does today’s worldwide expansion of schooling foster a global economic convergence? These questions need fresh answers at this time of growing concern over inequality. Past studies have abundantly documented the effects of schooling on within-country inequality, but we know little about corresponding effects on between-country inequality. We fill this gap by drawing on two innovations. The first is to formulate a theory of global inequality that integrates international differences in both the quantity and quality of education. The second, methodological, innovation is to propose and apply a method for decomposing trends in global inequality in GDP in terms of five social forces that include the quantity and quality of schooling. Analyses focus on the 1990–2010 period. The results confirm the continued salience of education: Trends in education account for as much as 80% of the 1990–2010 decline in between-country GDP inequality. However, we find a declining significance of “quantity” over “quality.” In sum, education remains salient as a global equalizer but its salience increasingly depends on bridging international differences in school quality.

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.

Issues related to economic development and growth are oft discussed to illustrate the health of a nation. However, such development is constrained by the inequality parameter of the representative society. Again, economic fluctuations arising from several crises may hinder the representative nation from getting on a smooth path to development. Now, augmentation of crises along with the presence of inequality may trigger economic vulnerabilities, leading to unsustainable economic development. Against this backdrop, we initially frame a theoretical model to capture the above-mentioned issues and try to derive plausible economic interpretations for the same. To verify the same in a more robust manner, we consider a panel of 30 developing countries from Africa, spanning the time period 1980–2020. Both the health status and the education status of our panel of countries are used to explore the sustainability issue in the presence of income inequality. All data have been collected from the World Development Indicators (WDI) and Standardized World Income Inequality Database (SWIID) (Table 21.1

Variables Description.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of three modes of globalization, i.e. trade globalization, financial globalization and technological globalization, separately on income inequality on the Asian emerging economies.

The study uses Hecksher–Ohlin and the Stolper–Samuelson theorem as a theoretical model for the relationship between globalization and income inequality. The study uses pooled least square (POLS) and instrumental variable least square (IVLS) estimation technique but prefers the IVLS over POLS due to the problems of omitted variable biased and endogeneity. Due to unavailability of data for all the Asian emerging economies, the study uses the following 11 countries, i.e. Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Singapore, South Korea and Thailand, from 1980 to 2014 for the trade and technological globalization model and from 1990 to 2014 for the financial globalization model.

Trade globalization significantly contributes to reduce income inequality in the Asian emerging economies. The impact of financial globalization on income inequality suggests that financial integration causes an increase in income inequality. Therefore, the benefits of financial globalization are not evenly distributed among the rich and the poor. The impact of technological globalization significantly contributes in the reduction of income inequality.

Government has to invest in research and development activities, establish efficient financial system, reduce trade restrictions and provide subsidies that help to increase the volume of trade.

This study contributes in the existing literature by analyzing the impact of trade globalization, financial globalization and technological globalization on income inequality in Asian emerging economies. The study provides useful guidelines to policy makers and governments to make effective policies in relation to globalization and income inequality that lead toward economic growth and reducing income inequality.