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鈥淗ow do you see income distribution in your time, and how and why do you expect it to change?鈥� That is the question Branko Milanovic imagines posing to six of history's most influential economists: Fran莽ois 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 鈥渋nequality鈥� as a general concept: any analysis of it is inextricably linked to a particular time and place.

takes us from Quesnay and the physiocrats, for whom social classes were prescribed by law, through the classic nineteenth-century treatises of Smith, Ricardo, and Marx, who saw class as a purely economic category driven by means of production. It shows how Pareto reconceived class as a matter of elites versus the rest of the population, while Kuznets saw inequality arising from the urban-rural divide. And it explains why inequality studies were eclipsed during the Cold War, before their remarkable resurgence as a central preoccupation in economics today.

Meticulously extracting each author鈥檚 view of income distribution from their often voluminous writings, Milanovic offers an invaluable 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鈥檚 outlook given what was knowable to them within their historical contexts and methodologies.

Copies of the book will be available for sale at the event.

About the author

听is Senior Scholar at the Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality at the City University of New York and Visiting Professor at the International Inequalities Institute at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Formerly Lead Economist in the World Bank鈥檚 research department, he is the author of听Capitalism, Alone; and听The Haves and the Have-Nots.

Panel:

Associate Professor in Economics at the 麻豆传媒视频网站 institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP)

Marco Ranaldi (Chair): Assistant Professor in Economics at听麻豆传媒视频网站 SSEES and Director of the 麻豆传媒视频网站 Centre for New Economics Transitions (CNET)