Milanovic, Branko

Person:
Milanovic, Branko

Poverty and Inequality Unit, Development Research Group, World Bank

Author Name Variants

Milanović, Branko, Milanovic, Branco

Fields of Specialization

Income Distribution; Inequality; Globalization

External Links

SSRN
RePEc

Departments

Poverty and Inequality Unit, Development Research Group, World Bank

Last updated:February 1, 2023

Biography

Lead economist in World Bank Research Department in the unit dealing with poverty and income inequality; College Park professor at the School of Public Policy, University of Maryland. He was a long-term visiting profesor at the School for Advanced International Studies in Washington (1997-2007), and senior associate at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (2003-05). He is the author of numerous articles on methodology and empirics of global income distribution and effects of globalization. His most recent book The Haves and the Have-nots: A Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality, was published in December 2010, and translated in seven languages.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/10986/38624

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Publication Search Results

Now showing1 - 10 of 37

The Return of "Patrimonial Capitalism" : A Review of Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century
(American Economic Association, 2014-06) Milanovic, Branko
Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty provides a unified theory of the functioning of the capitalist economy by linking theories of economic growth and functional and personal income distributions. It argues, based on the long-run historical data series, that the forces of economic divergence (including rising income inequality) tend to dominate in capitalism. It regards the twentieth century as an exception to this rule and proposes policies that would make capitalism sustainable in the twenty-first century.
Inequality is Bad for Growth of the Poor (but Not for That of the Rich)
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2018-10) van der Weide, Roy; Milanovic, Branko
The paper investigates the relationship between income inequality and future income growth rates of households at different points of the income distribution. The analysis uses micro-census data from U.S. states covering the period from 1960 to 2010, and controls for exposure to imports from China and share of routine jobs, among other variables. It finds evidence that high levels of inequality reduce the income growth of the poor but, if anything, help the growth of the rich.
The Return of "Patrimonial Capitalism" : Review of Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century
(World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2014-07) Milanovic, Branko
The paper provides a detailed review of Thomas Piketty's book "Capital in the 21st century." It focuses on the new contributions of the book, and in particular on its unified treatment of economic growth, functional income distribution, and concentration of personal income. It concludes that Piketty's reinvigoration of classical and empircally-drven approach is likely to have a profound impact on economics.
Global Income Distribution: From the Fall of the Berlin Wall to the Great Recession
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2016-07-01) Lakner, Christoph; Milanovic, Branko
We present an improved panel database of national household surveys between 1988 and 2008. In 2008, the global Gini index is around 70.5%, having declined by approximately 2 Gini points. China graduated from the bottom ranks, changing a twin-peaked global income distribution to a single-peaked one and creating an important global “median” class. 90% of the fastest growing country-deciles are from Asia, while almost 90% of the worst performers are from mature economies. Another “winner” was the global top 1%. Hence the global growth incidence curve has a distinct supine S shape, with gains highest around the median and top.
Global Income Distribution : From the Fall of the Berlin Wall to the Great Recession
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-12) Lakner, Christoph; Milanovic, Branko
The paper presents a newly compiled and improved database of national household surveys between 1988 and 2008. In 2008, the global Gini index is around 70.5 percent having declined by approximately 2 Gini points over this twenty year period. When it is adjusted for the likely under-reporting of top incomes in surveys by using the gap between national accounts consumption and survey means in combination with a Pareto-type imputation of the upper tail, the estimate is a much higher global Gini of almost 76 percent. With such an adjustment the downward trend in the Gini almost disappears. Tracking the evolution of individual country-deciles shows the underlying elements that drive the changes in the global distribution: China has graduated from the bottom ranks, modifying the overall shape of the global income distribution in the process and creating an important global "median" class that has transformed a twin-peaked 1988 global distribution into an almost single-peaked one now. The "winners" were country-deciles that in 1988 were around the median of the global income distribution, 90 percent of whom in terms of population are from Asia. The "losers" were the country-deciles that in 1988 were around the 85th percentile of the global income distribution, almost 90 percent of whom in terms of population are from mature economies.
Global Income Inequality by the Numbers : In History and Now
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-11) Milanovic, Branko
The paper presents an overview of calculations of global inequality, recently and over the long-run as well as main controversies and political and philosophical implications of the findings. It focuses in particular on the winners and losers of the most recent episode of globalization, from 1988 to 2008. It suggests that the period might have witnessed the first decline in global inequality between world citizens since the Industrial Revolution. The decline however can be sustained only if countries' mean incomes continue to converge (as they have been doing during the past ten years) and if internal (within-country) inequalities, which are already high, are kept in check. Mean-income convergence would also reduce the huge "citizenship premium" that is enjoyed today by the citizens of rich countries.
Inequality is Bad for Growth of the Poor (But Not for That of the Rich)
(World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2014-07) van der Weide, Roy; Milanovic, Branko
The paper assesses the impact of overall inequality, as well as inequality among the poor and among the rich, on the growth rates along various percentiles of the income distribution. The analysis uses micro-census data from U.S. states covering the period from 1960 to 2010. The paper finds evidence that high levels of inequality reduce the income growth of the poor and, if anything, help the growth of the rich. When inequality is deconstructed into bottom and top inequality, the analysis finds that it is mostly top inequality that is holding back growth at the bottom.
Party Age and Party Color : New Results on the Political Economy of Redistribution and Inequality
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014-12) Keefer, Philip; Milanovic, Branko
This paper advances research on inequality with unique, new data on income distribution in 61 countries, including 20 Latin American countries, to explore the effects of political parties on redistribution. First, consistent with a central -- but still contested -- assumption of the political economy literature, left-wing governments redistribute more. In addition, consistent with recent research on the importance of party organization and the organizational differences between younger and older parties, older left-wing parties are more likely to internalize the long-run costs of redistribution and to be more credible in their commitment to redistribution, leading them to redistribute less. With entirely different data, the paper also provides evidence on mechanisms: left-wing governments not only redistribute more, they tax more; older left-wing parties, though, tax less than younger ones.
Inside Inequality in the Arab Republic of Egypt : Facts and Perceptions across People, Time, and Space
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2014-04-02) Al-Shawarby, Sherine; Verme, Paolo; El Tawila, Sahar; Milanovic, Branko; Gadallah, May; A. El-Majeed, Enas Ali
This book joins four papers prepared in the framework of the Egypt inequality study financed by the World Bank. The first paper prepared by Sherine Al-Shawarby reviews the studies on inequality in Egypt since the 1950s with the double objective of illustrating the importance attributed to inequality through time and of presenting and compare the main published statistics on inequality. To our knowledge, this is the first time that such a comprehensive review is carried. The second paper prepared by Branko Milanovic turns to the global and spatial dimensions of inequality. The objective here is to put Egypt inequality in the global context and better understand the origin and size of spatial inequalities within Egypt using different forms of measurement across regions and urban and rural areas. The Egyptian society remains deeply divided across space and in terms of welfare and this study unveils some of the hidden features of this inequality. The third paper prepared by Paolo Verme studies facts and perceptions of inequality during the period 2000-2009, the period that preceded the Egyptian revolution. The objective of this part is to provide some initial elements that could explain the apparent mismatch between inequality measured with household surveys and inequality aversion measured by values surveys. No such study has been carried out before in the Middle-East and North-Africa (MENA) region and this seemed a particular important and timely topic to address in the light of the unfolding developments in the Arab region. The fourth paper prepared by Sahar El Tawila, May Gadallah and Enas Ali A. El-Majeed assesses the state of poverty and inequality among the poorest villages of Egypt. The paper attempts to explain the level of inequality in an effort to disentangle those factors that derive from household abilities from those factors that derive from local opportunities. This is the first time that such study is conducted in Egypt. The book should be of interest to any observer of the political and economic evolution of the Arab region in the past few years and to poverty and inequality specialists that wish to have a deeper understanding of the distribution of incomes in Egypt and other countries in the MENA region.
Global Inequality of Opportunity : How Much of Our Income Is Determined By Where We Live?
(MIT Press, 2014-01-07) Milanovic, Branko
Suppose that all people in the world are allocated only two characteristics over which they have (almost) no control: country of residence and income distribution within that country. Assume further that there is no migration. We show that more than one-half of variability in income of world population classified according to their household per capita in one-percent income groups (by country) is accounted for by these two characteristics. The role of effort or luck cannot play a large role in explaining global distribution of income.