Global inequality in historical and comparative perspective

In 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.

Meet our speaker and chair

Thomas Piketty (@PikettyWIL) is Professor at EHESS and the Paris School of Economics and an alumnus of LSE. He is the author of numerous research articles and of a dozen books. He has done historical and theoretical work on the interplay between economic development, the distribution of income and wealth, and political conflict. He is also co-director of the World Inequality Lab and the World Inequality Database. He is the author of the international best-sellers Capital in the 21st Century (2014) and Capital and Ideology (2020).

Francisco H. G. Ferreira is the Amartya Sen Professor of Inequality Studies at LSE, where he is also Director of the International Inequalities Institute. Francisco is an economist working on the measurement, causes and consequences of inequality and poverty in developing countries, with a special focus on Latin America.

More about this event

The (@LSEInequalities) at LSE brings together experts from many LSE departments and centres to lead critical and cutting-edge research to understand why inequalities are escalating in numerous arenas across the world, and to develop critical tools to address these challenges.

This event is the keynote lecture of the International Inequalities Institute 10-year conference.

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