Join us for this talk by Branko Milanovic about his new book, Visions of Inequality: from the French Revolution to the end of the Cold War.
A history of how economists across two centuries have thought about inequality, told through portraits of six key figures. “How do you see income distribution in your time, and how and why do you expect it to change?” That is the question Branko Milanovic imagines posing to six of history's most influential economists: François Quesnay, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Karl Marx, Vilfredo Pareto, and Simon Kuznets. Probing their works in the context of their lives, he charts the evolution of thinking about inequality, showing just how much views have varied among ages and societies. Indeed, Milanovic argues, we cannot speak of “inequality” as a general concept: any analysis of it is inextricably linked to a particular time and place. Meticulously extracting each author’s view of income distribution from their writings, Milanovic offers a genealogy of the discourse surrounding inequality. These intellectual portraits are infused not only with a deep understanding of economic theory but also with psychological nuance, reconstructing each thinker’s outlook given what was knowable to them within their historical contexts and methodologies.
Meet our speaker and chair
Branko Milanovic (@BrankoMilan) is a Research Professor at the Graduate Center at City University of New York (CUNY), Senior Scholar at the Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality at CUNY, and Visiting Professor at the International Inequalities Institute at LSE. Milanovic’s main area of work is income inequality, in individual countries and globally, including in pre-industrial societies.
Facundo Alvaredo is Co-Director of the World Inequality Database and the World Inequality Lab. He is also a Professorial Research Fellow at the International Inequalities Institute at LSE. His research is centred in the fields of public economics, the inequality of income and wealth, and the continuation of the living yet dormant scientific project of Political Economy.
More about this event
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The International Inequalities Institute (@LSEInequalities) brings together experts from many of the School's departments and centres to lead cutting-edge research focused on understanding why inequalities are escalating in numerous arenas across the world, and to develop critical tools to address these challenges.
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