Speakers Joseph E. Stiglitz, professor of economics at Columbia University and the recipient of a John Bates Clark Medal and a Nobel Prize, James K. Galbraith, Professor of Government at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas, and Branko Milanovic, Lead economist in the World Bank’s research department, will address the progressive emergence of this new discipline: from its roots in classical economics, with its focus on the inequality of social classes (the functional distribution of income), to its shift, beginning in the early part of the twentieth, toward considering inequality among individuals. What sorts of data make it possible to measure inequality among citizens of a nation—and between citizens of different nations? Can we measure inequality between individuals of different nations as if they belonged to the same one? Does a polarization measure say anything about the structure of a society? How do we measure what happens between the extremes of the very rich and the very poor?

This event is co-sponsored by the Institute for New Economic Thinking and Columbia University Seminar in Economic History, and made possible through the generous support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Download Professor Milanovic’s paper