Branko Milanovic

Branko Milanovic is a Visiting Presidential Professor at the Graduate Center City University of New York and Senior Scholar at the Stone Center for Socio-economic Inequality. He obtained his Ph. D. in economics (1987) from the University of Belgrade with a dissertation on income inequality in Yugoslavia. He served as lead economist in the World Bank’s Research Department for almost 20 years, leaving to write his seminal book on global income inequality, Worlds Apart (2005). He was senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington (2003-2005) and has held teaching appointments at the University of Maryland (2007-2013) and at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University (1997- 2007).

Branko’s main area of work is income inequality, in individual countries and globally, including in pre-industrial societies. In addition to numerous papers for the World Bank, he has published articles on these topics in Economic Journal, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Economic Literature, and Journal of Political Philosophy, among others. His book, The Haves and the Have-nots (2011) was selected by The Globalist as the 2011 Book of the Year. His new book, Global Inequality (2016), was awarded the Bruno Kreisky Prize for the best political book of 2016 and was translated into twelve languages. It addresses economic and political effects of globalization, including the concept of successive “Kuznets waves” of inequality, largely driven, since the first industrial revolution, by technology and globalization. In October 2017, Branko was awarded (jointly with Mariana Mazzucato) the 2018 Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Knowledge.

Post Archive

29 November 2021
Branko Milanovic explores the life of the enigmatic economist through a recent book on his friendship with David Hume. Dennis Rasmussen’s book The infidel and the professor is a…
22 November 2021
Branko Milanovic on why labor-managed companies - as seen in China - must ensure they avoid political influence. The recent bizarre and rather ignorant discussion…
08 November 2021
Branko Milanovic argues that research on the economics of global inequality is a window onto power and politics. I wrote this in a Twitter discussion about the importance of…
06 October 2021
Branko Milanovic highlights similarities between the domestic politics of two global rivals. While the United States and China are at loggerheads on many issues from …
17 September 2021
Branko Milanovic explores a new book that unpicks ways to address globalizations' downsides.  In an excellent just-published book “Six faces of globalization” Anthea Roberts and…
18 August 2021
Branko Milanovic on why Trotsky's briliance and flaws still haunt the left. As people who follow my feed know, I have recently reread the three volumes of Leszek Kolakowski’s…
03 August 2021
Branko Milanovic explores alternatives to the problem of eurocentrism in economics. Sebastian Conrad’s book “What is global history?” is in many ways important for economists and…
26 July 2021
Branko Milanovic finds important lessons for activists in Norway's climate change virtue-signaling. In the eighteenth century, the English-led East India Company gradually managed…
03 June 2021
Branko Milanovic explores the serendipitous and economic developments that led to China's success and communist regimes' failures. In an excellent book “How China Escaped Shock…
20 May 2021
Branko Milanovic with a useful primer on the persistent problem. 1. What is global inequality?  Global inequality is inequality between all citizens of the world. It…
11 May 2021
Branko Milanovic explores how two authors (Marx and Tocqueville) that start from almost opposite personal and ideological positions can have similar diagnosis of inequality and…
21 April 2021
With events moving fast, Branko Milanovic on the commodification of everything.  I should feel happy. I got it right. The entire Chapter 5 of “Capitalism, Alone”  …
09 April 2021
"The World Turned Upside Down"—a critical review (Part 1) This may be the most difficult book review to write. I have decided to break it into two parts. Writing it is difficult…
11 March 2021
Following from his recent critiques, Branko Milanovic applies his knowledge of global inequality to help address an impasse in degrowth debates. I have recently criticized…
23 February 2021
Branko Milanovic outlines the ideological divides and rhetorical tactics distinguishing degrowers and growers. The difficulty of discussion with degrowers comes…