Events
III events bring some of the world's biggest academic names to LSE to explore the challenge of global inequality.
Upcoming events
If not government, then what? A three-part typology of redistributive preferences
III Event for The III at 10: New Directions in Inequality ResearchThursday 18 September, 9.15am to 10.30am. In-person and online event. Auditorium, LSE Centre Building.
Speaker:
Professor Leslie McCall, Presidential Professor of Political Science and Sociology, Graduate Center, CUNY and Associate Director, Stone Center on Socio-Economic InequalityChair:
Professor Fran Tonkiss, Professor of Sociology, LSEEconomic inequality is rising or at high levels in many countries across the globe. This has prompted a large, interdisciplinary and international body of research on public demands for government redistribution through income taxes and transfers. It is typically assumed – but not explicitly tested – that any opposition to government redistribution reflects acceptance of inequality or an individualistic belief in the undeservingness of the poor. We test this assumption directly and add a largely unexamined third possibility (besides government redistribution and individual responsibility): that major institutions and actors in the market sphere should reduce inequality in labor earnings. We find substantial support for this third market responsibility option, especially in advanced market economies such as the United States and Switzerland, where support for government redistribution is comparatively low. In contrast, we find the least support across all countries for the idea that inequality levels are acceptable or mainly the responsibility of the poor.
New directions in inequality research
III Event for The III at 10: New Directions in Inequality ResearchThursday 18 September 2025, 5.30pm - 6.45pm. In-person and online event. Auditorium, LSE Centre Building.
Speakers:
Professor Facundo Alvaredo, Professorial Research Fellow, International Inequalities Institute, London School of Economics;
Professor Steven Durlauf, Director, Stone Center for Research on Wealth Inequality and Mobility, University of Chicago
Professor Larry Kramer, President and Vice-Chancellor, London School of Economics
Professor Anne Phillips, Emeritus Professor, Department of Government, London School of EconomicsChair:
Professor Armine Ishkanian, Executive Director, Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity, London School of Economics
Global inequality in historical and comparative perspective
III Event for The III at 10: New Directions in Inequality ResearchFriday 19 September 2025, 3.30pm - 4.30pm. In-person and online event. Venue TBC to ticketholders.
Speakers:
Professor Thomas Piketty, Professor of Economics, EHESS and the Paris School of EconomicsChair:
Professor Francisco H.G. Ferreira, Amartya Sen Professor of Inequality Studies, LSE IIIIn this lecture, Thomas Piketty will discuss recent trends in global inequality and analyze the historical movement toward equality and future prospects for more redistribution. He will present new research produced by the World Inequality Lab.
This will include preliminary results from the Global Justice Project. Combining comparative historical data series from the World Inequality Database with global input-output tables, environmental accounts, labour force surveys and other sources, the Global Justice Project explores what a just distribution of socio-economic and environmental resources could look like at the global level from 2025 to 2100 – both between and within countries – in a way that is compatible with planetary boundaries. The project partly builds on the analysis and proposals set out in Thomas Piketty’s Brief History of Equality, extending them into a broader and more comprehensive global framework.
Asymmetric Information and Market Failure in Bank-NBFC Co-Lending Model
III SeminarTuesday 23 September, 1.00 - 2.00pm. In-person seminar. CBG 12.01.
Speaker: Dr Bibekananda Panda, 2025 Subir Chowdhury Visiting Fellow, India Observatory, III
Launched in November 2020, India’s Co-Lending Model (CLM) enables banks and NBFCs to jointly extend credit, blending low-cost capital with agile outreach. Regulatory evolution has expanded CLM’s scope beyond priority sectors, positioning it as a key driver of financial inclusion. Yet, uptake remains modest due to trust deficits and asymmetric information among lending partners. Divergent underwriting standards and risk appetites hinder coordination, distorting credit allocation. Stakeholder perspectives reveal that interoperability and mutual trust are essential to unlock CLM’s full potential. If banks and NBFCs align operational frameworks and embrace collaborative governance, CLM can reshape India’s lending architecture toward inclusive, efficient, and sustainable credit delivery.
Very simple models of economic inequality and how to solve it
Part of the Inequalities Seminar SeriesTuesday 30 September, 12.30 - 1.30pm. In-person and online seminar. CBG 2.03.
Speaker: Professor Jean-Paul Faguet, Professor of the Political Economy of Development, LSE
How much economic inequality is purely random? Policy debates focus on factors like human and physical capital and technology as driving productivity differences, which in turn interact with institutional and social factors to determine inequality outcomes. But is it possible that market dynamics are innately inequality-generating? I build very simple agent-based models of exchange economies in which random processes drive high levels of inequality. Some of these are so high that the economy explodes, and GDP falls to zero. I then add simple tax, transfer, and public goods features progressively and find optimal parameters that dramatically reduce inequality. It is possible to do this with modest, realistic levels of taxation and expenditure similar to European countries today. Which raises the question: if the mechanisms are so straightforward, why are we not using them?
Racism and racial justice: 40 years on from the Broadwater Farm riots
Hosted by the London School of Economics and Political Science and LSE Students' UnionWednesday 1 October, 6.30 to 8.00pm. In-person and online event. Venue TBC to ticketholders.
Speakers:
Dr Clive Chijioke Nwonka, Associate Professor in Film, Culture and Society, UCL School of European Languages, Culture and Society
Dr Roxana Willis, Assistant Professor in Law, LSEChair:
Professor Coretta Phillips, Professor of Criminology and Social Policy, LSE Department of Social PolicyJoin us to explore the legal, political and community-based racial justice work that emerged 40 years ago from the Broadwater Farm riots, examining methods of resistance that continue to address present-day questions of race, racism and social inequality.
On 6 October 1985, The Broadwater Farm Estate in Tottenham became the site of one of the most significant moments of civil disobedience in British history. Three men, known as the Tottenham 3, were wrongly convicted and later acquitted for the murder of PC Keith Blakelock after a long campaign for justice.
Four decades after the Broadwater Farm uprising, the events of October 1985 continue to resonate in the ongoing struggle against systemic racism. Marking the riots as a significant moment in Black British history, the event explores the Broadwater Farm Riots in the context of politics, community activism, law and criminology, the media and Black injustice.
Structural Changes and Intergenerational Educational Mobility during the Twentieth Century
Part of the Inequalities Seminar SeriesTuesday 7 October, 12.30 - 1.30pm. In-person and online seminar. CBG 2.03.
Speaker: Dr Mobarak Hossain, Assistant Professor, Department of Social Policy, LSE
This study examines the relationship between 'modernization' as part of broader structural changes and intergenerational educational mobility during the twentieth century. Previous research has linked rising mobility to processes such as urbanization, economic development, and educational expansion, but systematic cross-national evidence and mechanisms remain limited, especially outside high-income contexts. We address this gap by constructing harmonized estimates of intergenerational educational mobility for more than 100 countries and combining them with a multidimensional index of modernization. To investigate mechanisms, we employ counterfactual scenarios that probe how mobility would have evolved under alternative modernization trajectories.
Not just lines on a map: borders in a changing world
Hosted by the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity and the International Inequalities InstituteThursday 9 October, 6.30 to 8.00pm. In-person and online event. Venue TBC to ticketholders.
Speakers:
Dr Tarsis Brito, Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of International Relations, LSE
Dr Maya Goodfellow, Presidential Fellow in the Department of International Politics, City St George's University of London
Nousha Kabawat, Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity and the Head of the Syria Program at the International Center for Transitional Justice
Dr Luke de Noronha, Associate Professor in Race, Ethnicity and Postcolonial Studies, Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Racism and Racialisation, UCLChair:
Professor Armine Ishkanian, Executive Director, Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity and Professor, Department of Social Policy, LSEIn this panel discussion we will be joined by Maya Goodfellow, Tarsis Brito, Nousha Kabawat, and Luke de Noronha who will each draw on their areas of expertise to discuss the implications of borders in a changing world.
Borders are not just lines on a map marking geographical boundaries but are important for maintaining countries’ nationhood, identity, and security. Due to their importance, borders are also increasingly politicised to define who belongs and who does not, who is legally allowed to enter, and who has the right to own or live in a certain piece of land. Borders are connected to many of the debates of today and challenges of tomorrow, from the refugee crisis to decolonisation and global conflicts. So, how can we better understand how borders are connected to inequalities? Should we re-evaluate how we think about borders altogether? And what will the future of borders look like?
Local versus National: The effect of income (mis)perceptions on inequality beliefs and preferences
Part of the Inequalities Seminar SeriesTuesday 14 October, 12.30 - 1.30pm. In-person and online seminar. MAR 2.09.
Speaker: Dr Katy Morris, Postdoctoral Fellow, Swedish Institute for Social Research (SOFI), Stockholm University.
People are notoriously bad at estimating their position in the national income distribution. However, national income distributions can mask huge local-level variation. In light of new evidence that suggests people anchor to more immediate reference groups, we investigate whether people have more accurate perceptions of where they sit in the local income distribution and whether local income corrections induce greater change in individual inequality beliefs and preferences. Findings from a pre-registered survey experiment in the United States reveal that perceptions of household position within the local (county) and national income distributions are equally inaccurate, with respondents defaulting to the middle rung of the ladder at both scales. Though not uniformly stronger, we find that local income corrections produce more consistent changes in outcomes such as meritocratic belief and support for redistribution than national ones. These results challenge the received wisdom that the national context is the natural or default reference group.
(Un-)Persistent Conflict? The Effects of First Globalization Coffee Boom in Colombia
Part of the Inequalities Seminar SeriesTuesday 21 October, 12.30 - 1.30pm. In-person and online seminar. CBG 2.03.
Speaker: Daniel Sanchez-Ordoñez, PhD Candidate, Paris School of Economics
This paper examines the determinants and persistence of civil conflict using a new municipality-level dataset from Colombia covering the nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth-century civil war, La Violencia (1948--1965). I combine newly digitized archival records on violent deaths, historical coffee production, and political and demographic characteristics to study how economic shocks shape the geography and intensity of conflict over time. The analysis centers on the First Globalization period, when a coffee export boom reallocated production across space, shifting the agricultural frontier. While the incidence of civil conflict is widespread and persistent across Colombian history, I document that the intensity of violence during La Violencia shifted sharply toward new coffee-producing regions. I show that coffee cultivation generated highly appropriable rents, which enabled the emergence and persistence of economic banditry. Municipalities with greater coffee production hosted more bandit leaders and larger bandit groups, sustaining higher levels of violence during the conflict. These findings provide new evidence on the economic origins of civil conflict and contribute to debates on persistence by showing how large commodity shocks can overturn historical patterns, reshaping both the location and mechanisms of violence over time.
How do social policies unequally restrict reproduction among specific populations?
Part of the Inequalities Seminar SeriesTuesday 28 October, 12.30 - 1.30pm. In-person and online seminar. MAR 2.09.
Speaker: Dr Laura Sochas, Chancellor's Fellow and Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow, University of Edinburgh
In this seminar, Dr Sochas will share the findings of her recently concluded 3-year Leverhulme-funded project, exploring how social policies such as austerity, migration policy and family policy shape reproductive inequalities and health inequalities among parents in the UK and Europe. Through this project, she develops a quantitative approach to “thinking with” the framework of Reproductive Justice, which particularly advocates for the right of all individuals and communities to have children (or not) and to parent with dignity.
Great global transformation: national market liberalism in a multipolar world
Hosted by the International Inequalities InstituteThursday 6 November, 6.30 - 8.00pm. In-person and online event. Old Theatre, LSE Old Building.
Speaker:
Professor Branko Milanovic, Research Professor, Graduate Center at City University of New York (CUNY); Senior Scholar, Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality at CUNY, and Visiting Professor, LSE IIIChair:
Professor Kirsten Sehnbruch, British Academy Global Professor and Distinguished Policy Fellow, LSE IIIJoin us for this talk by Branko Milanovic about his new book, The Great Global Transformation: National Market Liberalism in a Multipolar World.
Global neoliberalism is on its last legs, while a new international economic order is taking hold. Trade blocs, tariff wars, economic sanctions, and national champions are in; nationalism, anti-immigration movements and the far-right are on the rise. Liberalism is being rejected by the civic realm, as the status quo of the past fifty years crumbles. What remains in its wake? Drawing on original research, economist Branko Milanovic reveals the seismic shifts that are shaping our world. He details the facts: how the rising economic power of Asia is creating a new global ‘middle class’ in the greatest reshuffle of incomes since the Industrial Revolution. He explores our fears: why are we becoming increasingly unhappy, when the world is becoming richer and more equal? And he shows us the fight ahead: as plutocracy returns, global war threatens, and a new system silently shapes our nations, driving malcontent to breaking point.
Intergenerational Income Mobility around the World: A Meta-Analysis
Part of the Inequalities Seminar SeriesTuesday 11 November, 12.30 - 1.30pm. In-person and online seminar. MAR 2.06.
Speaker: Dr Louis Sirugue, Research Officer, LSE III
Intergenerational income persistence is commonly measured as the degree of association between the lifetime income of individuals and that of their parents. Over the last decade, a growing literature has provided national estimates of intergenerational income persistence for a wide range of countries. At the same time, evidence has shown that these estimates are highly sensitive to methodological choices, such as the number of years over which income is averaged, the age at which it is measured, or the set of variables used to predict parental income when it is unobserved. In most cases, data constraints prevent researchers from adopting best practices, limiting comparability across studies. This study systematically compiles national estimates of intergenerational persistence from the literature together with detailed information on their estimation settings. Cross-study variation in these parameters is used to provide a joint assessment of the impact of estimation settings on persistence estimates. Building on these results, national measures are adjusted for methodological differences to provide as consistent a depiction of the variation in intergenerational mobility across countries as possible.
Inequalities Seminar with Professor Peter Lanjouw (title TBC)
Part of the Inequalities Seminar SeriesTuesday 18 November, 12.30 - 1.30pm. In-person and online seminar. CBG 2.03.
Speaker: Professor Peter Lanjouw, Professor of Development Economics, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Discrimination Law and the Family
Part of the Inequalities Seminar SeriesTuesday 25 November, 12.30 - 1.30pm. In-person and online seminar. MAR 2.09.
Speaker: Professor Tarun Khaitan, Professor (Chair) of Public Law, LSE Law School
Discrimination law has traditionally only regulated the state and the market. Within these domains, discrimination law imposes its duties unidirectionally—the state may not discriminate against citizens, landlords against tenants, retailers against consumers, and so on, but not vice versa. I had argued previously that that discrimination law’s unidirectionality scrambles the classical liberal public-private divide from a binary distinction to a spectrum of publicness. Thus understood, discrimination law remains faithful to the liberal commitment to the public-private divide, while acknowledging—with feminists—that the personal can be political.
In this paper, I will apply this spectral understanding of publicness to assess discrimination law’s choice to only regulate discrimination in the state and the market, and not within the family. In this paper, I will argue that discrimination law’s failure to regulate the family discriminates indirectly based on grounds such as sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, pregnancy, age, and marital status. What is more, this discrimination is almost certainly unjustifiable under existing doctrine. Finally, I will speculate on some feasible ways in which discrimination law could regulate certain forms of discrimination within the family.
Should the UK have a wealth tax? The Wealth Tax Commission five years on
Co-hosted with LSE Law School and CenTaxMonday 01 December, 6.30 - 8.00pm. In-person and online event. Old Theatre, LSE Old Building.
Speakers:
Professor Arun Advani, Director of the Centre for the Analysis of Taxation (CenTax) and Associate Professor, Economics Department, University of Warwick
Emma Chamberlain, Visiting Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Oxford
Dr Andy Summers, Director of the Centre for Analysis of Taxation (CenTax) and Associate Professor, LSE Law SchoolJoin us at this event to explore how the wealth tax conversation has evolved and whether the UK should be looking to implement a wealth tax today.
In 2020, the Wealth Tax Commission brought together world-leading academics, policymakers and tax practitioners to ‘think big’ about tax policy. Published in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and the public finance crisis it triggered, the Commission examined the viability of both annual and one-off wealth taxes. Comprising over thirty papers and half a million words, it remains the most comprehensive body of evidence on wealth taxation globally.
Five years on, the question of how governments can meet increasing public service demand, while confronting escalating geopolitical and environmental challenges, is more urgent than ever. At this event, the Commission’s authors reunite to reflect on its influence on research, policy making and public debate, and share what they learned from the process and the viability of a wealth tax in the UK today.
Local Cost of Living and the Geography of Inequality: Evidence from Spain
Part of the Inequalities Seminar SeriesTuesday 2 December, 12.30 - 1.30pm. In-person and online seminar. CBG 2.03.
Speaker: Dr Beatriz Jambrina Canseco, Research Officer, Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative
Standard measures of poverty and income inequality often overlook how sharply the cost of living varies across places. To address this issue in the case of Spain, I develop a new public database of local consumer price indices tailored to the expenditure patterns of different income groups. Using these local CPIs to deflate household incomes between 2006 and 2022 reveals that national inflation adjustments understate inequality growth during the financial crisis and misrepresent poverty -- overestimating it in rural areas and underestimating its impact in larger cities. The findings highlight the importance of accounting for spatial variation in prices in poverty and inequality measurement, with clear policy implications.
Billionaire Responses to the Recently Increased Appetite to Tax their Wealth
Part of the Inequalities Seminar SeriesTuesday 9 December, 12.30 - 1.30pm. In-person and online seminar. KSW.G.01.
Speaker: Professor Marlies Glasius, Professor in International Relations, Department of Politics, University of Amsterdam
The super-rich (worth $50 million or more) avoid and evade wealth-based taxation a great deal, but little is actually known about how, how much and why the people at the very top of the wealth chain avoid taxation. In this talk I will present a new dataset on the responses of the hundred richest billionaires in democracies to various forms of wealth-based taxation. We gathered data about their personal characteristics, their public statements about wealth-based taxation, and their tax minimization behaviour between 1991 and 2024. Based on open sources including business journalism, tax advocacy, offshore leaks and lawsuits, it considers their material, legal and discursive responses to wealth-based taxation. Findings to date include important changes in the extent and nature of billionaire speech about wealth-based taxation since the global financial crisis, as well as shifts away from the use of tax havens to other forms of transnational or domestic tax minimization.
Previous Events
Catch up on all of our past events here.