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

06 December 2018
This is the question that I am often asked and will be asked in two days. So I decided to write my answers down.   The argument why inequality should not matter is…
27 November 2018
Branko Milanovic explores 'globalist' authors.    When you read VS Naipaul for the first time, it is like when you have tasted ice for the first time (to use another of…
20 November 2018
Branko Milanovic on the delusions at the heart of Adam Smith's writings.  It is this deception which rouses and keeps in continual motion the industry of mankind. It is…
13 November 2018
Branko Milanovic provides an update on global inequality trends.  With domestic inequalities and “populism” taking center stage, the changes in global income inequality have…
02 November 2018
Branko Milanovic recalls Poland's remarkable integration into the world system.  When several days ago I ran into a Polish bar tender(ness) in a restaurant in New York and…
26 October 2018
The Great Regression Edited by Heinrich Geiselberger. Wiley. 2017.  In a slender volume edited by Heinrich Geisenberger “The Great Regression”, fifteen, among  the most important…
18 October 2018
On China by Henery Kissinger. Penguin Books, 2012   Henry Kissinger’s “On China” (Penguin Books, 2012) is a magisterial book. Although it deals almost entirely with China, it…
10 October 2018
You think it is a contradiction in terms, a paradox. But you are wrong: we are used to think in pure categories while life is much more complex; and paradoxes do exist in real…
02 October 2018
Adam Smith: What he Thought and Why it Matters by Jesse Norman. Allen Lane. 2018. 9780241328491   The recent book by Jesse Norman simply entitled “Adam Smith”is a pleasure to read…
29 August 2018
Branko Milanovic on the different communities that inhabit Europe's day / night cycles.    The Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic was assassinated in 2003, after…
21 August 2018
In the first of three posts, Branko Milanovic explores periods of “globalization” and asks how sure are we about assigning them dates? We are used to speaking with…
12 July 2018
Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist by Kate Raworth. Cornerstone Digital. 2017.    My first Summer book  to read and review is Kate Raworth’s…
02 July 2018
My first World Cup was the one in Chile in 1962. In those days, there were no satellites to beam the picture directly from South America to Europe so the live games were listened…
01 June 2018
I have already written  before (in a tweet) that no one who travels through Western Europe, especially in Summer, can fail to be impressed by the wealth and beauty of the…