Conferences, workshops and seminars
Upcoming conferences, workshops and seminars
Beyond the Divide: Early-Career Conference on Political Dimensions of Urban and Rural Life
Co-hosted by the International Inequalities Institute and the Department of Government23 – 24 April 2026
We invite submissions for the Early-Career Conference on the Political Dimensions of Urban and Rural Life co-hosted by the LSE International Inequalities Institute and the LSE Department of Government. This conference is designed to support the development of early-career scholars (PhD students, post docs and assistant professors) working in political science, geography, sociology, urban studies, economics, and other related fields. The conference welcomes research examining urban politics, rural politics, or comparative analyses between contexts.
Please complete the submission form by Friday 13 February 2026. Notifications of acceptance will be sent in early March 2026. Draft papers are due by 6 April 2026 for pre-circulation.
12 facts about poverty and homelessness in the U.S.
Tuesday 28 April 2026, 12.30 to 1.30pm. In-person and online seminar. LSE Centre Building 2.03.Speaker:
Professor Bruce D. Meyer, McCormick Foundation Professor, University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy
Capitalization of the world: global distribution of income from property
Wednesday 20 May 2026, 12.30 to 1.30pm. In-person and online seminar. LSE Lecture Theatre, Centre Building.
Speakers:
Professor Branko Milanovic, Research Professor, Graduate Center at City University of New York (CUNY) and Visiting Professor, LSE III
Dr Marco Ranaldi, Assistant Professor in Economics, University College London and Director, UCL Centre for New Economic Transitions (CNET).Global capital income inequality has declined in the 21st century, with the Gini coefficient falling from 97% to 94%. Over the same period, the share of the world population with annual capital income above $100 increased from 12% to 27%. This implies more than a doubling of the number of individuals earning positive income from interest, dividends, rents, and privately-funded pensions. Most Western nations have lost positions in the global capital income ranking, in contrast to several developing countries, particularly China and Russia. When adjusting for missing capital income in surveys using national accounts, while the levels of inequality slightly vary across adjustment methods, the results consistently confirm a decreasing inequality trend. This is also confirmed when the capitalized wealth of billionaires is included in the analysis using Forbes lists. Overall, this paper provides new global evidence on the evolution, distribution, and measurement of capital income, and highlights its implications for inequality analysis in contemporary capitalism.
World Inequality Conference
Co-sponsored by the International Inequalities InstituteThursday 4 June - Saturday 6 June 2026. Paris School of Economics.
The International Inequalities Institute is supporting the the third edition of the World Inequality Conference, organised by the World Inequality Lab. The conference will be structured around three pillars:
1. Release of the Global Justice Report: The report will explore what a just distribution of socioeconomic and environmental resources could look like at the global level from 2026 to 2100 – both between and within countries – in a way that is compatible with planetary boundaries.
2. Keynote Sessions: Speakers will include academics, policymakers and writers.3
3. Paper Presentations: Accepted submissions will be organized into parallel theme-wise sessions.Please note that the call for papers is now closed and won't be accepting any further submissions.
General public registration opens on 15 April 2026 and closes on 15 May 2026.
Previous conferences, workshops and seminars
Climate Inequalities Mini-Conference
19 March 2026
The Economics of Environmental Inequality programme co-hosted the second Economics of Environment and Energy mini-conference on the topic of Climate Inequalities. Stephane Hallegate (the World Bank’s Chief Economic Advisor for Climate) gave a keynote presentation. The programme also included short student 'egg-timer’ presentations, offering an opportunity to receive feedback on research.
Speaker:
Victoria Hünewaldt, PhD candidate, University of Siena
In a nationally representative online survey experiment with 4,000 respondents in Germany, we study how inflation narratives shape beliefs about the distributional consequences of inflation and attitudes toward mitigating policies. We first elicit respondents’ top-of-mind narratives for the recent surge in inflation using an open-ended question. We find that respondents predominantly attribute recent inflation to the war in Ukraine and to supply-side shocks. Participants are then randomly exposed to one of three newspaper-based narratives emphasising either pent-up demand, the energy price crisis, or corporate price-gouging. In the control group, participants perceive lower income households as well as small and medium-sized firms to be disproportionately burdened by inflation, and a majority of proposed mitigation policies receives broad public support.
Status mobility in China: past and present
4 March 2026
Speaker:
Professor Steven Durlauf, Frank P. Hixon Distinguished Service Professor and Director of the Stone Center for Research on Wealth Inequality and Mobility, University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy
This talk will describe intergenerational mobility in China for two distinct epochs: the last 120 years of the Qing Dynasty and the last 30 years for modern China. Novel Markov chain approaches to measuring mobility are employed which provide insights into transitional versus long run mobility patterns for the two periods.