We examine the relationship between trade and financial globalization and the rise in inequality in most countries in recent decades. We find technological progress as having a greater impact than globalization on inequality. The limited overall impact of globalization reflects two offsetting tendencies: whereas trade globalization is associated with a reduction in inequality, financial globalization-and foreign direct investment in particular-is associated with an increase. A key finding is that both globalization and technological changes increase the returns on human capital, underscoring the importance of education and training in both developed and developing countries in addressing rising inequality.

Over the past two decades, the percentage of the world’s population living on less than a dollar a day has been cut in half. How much of that improvement is because of—or in spite of—globalization? While anti-globalization activists mount loud critiques and the media report breathlessly on globalization’s perils and promises, economists have largely remained silent, in part because of an entrenched institutional divide between those who study poverty and those who study trade and finance. Globalization and Poverty bridges that gap, bringing together experts on both international trade and poverty to provide a detailed view of the effects of globalization on the poor in developing nations, answering such questions as: Do lower import tariffs improve the lives of the poor? Has increased financial integration led to more or less poverty? How have the poor fared during various currency crises? Does food aid hurt or help the poor? Poverty, the contributors show here, has been used as a popular and convenient catchphrase by parties on both sides of the globalization debate to further their respective arguments. Globalization and Poverty provides the more nuanced understanding necessary to move that debate beyond the slogans.

Internationally, globalization and increased economic integration has impacted quality of life and individual well-being. Attempts to evaluate the impact on income dispersion from this process have been extremely controversial. This key volume is the first real attempt to build up indices and a theoretical framework in order to deal with inequality of opportunity, and to enable social and political institutions to monitor increasing disparities in well-being and social exclusion. It thoroughly examines the possible relationships between the recent acceleration in economic integration and inequality among persons and countries and will enable social and political institutions to monitor increasing disparities in well-being and social exclusion. The contributions to this volume cover various subfields of economics, and examine both the negative and positive spillover effects of economic integration on individuals, social groups and nations. Since the impact of globalization on the most deprived people is multidimensional in nature, the theoretical framework is extended to a multivariate context where several individual characteristics are simultaneously considered. This original volume covers many important topics and features an impressive array of respected contributors. As such, it is sure to be an invaluable resource for postgraduates and professionals in the fields of political economy and economics.

This book will summarize what we know about technology and inequality across disciplines, and seek out new ways to analyze this relationship based on technology and business practices, with the objective of restoring digital technology as an engine of opportunity. Besides the unique focus on the role of technology in inequality, the book will have a unifying theme of tracing wealth creation and wealth capture in the technology sector, and relating specific practices—what technology companies actually do—to larger shifts in wealth and power. A clear conceptual framework will be used to analyze key industry case studies: search engines, social media, and the ‘sharing’ economy.

The book examines the relationship between inequality, growth and technological progress. It provides a broad overview of the existing literature and introduces specific, innovative aspects about the impact of inequality and redistribution on growth when growth is driven by human or physical capital investments, as well as the impact of technological progress and accumulation on the distribution of earnings. There is a special focus on the role of social comparison, redistributive taxation and new information technologies for the relationship between inequality and growth. The analytical part of the book mainly consists of endogenous growth models.

Hornborg argues that we are caught in a collective illusion about the nature of modern technology that prevents us from imagining solutions to our economic and environmental crises other than technocratic fixes. He demonstrates how the power of the machine generates increasingly asymmetrical exchanges and distribution of resources and risks between distant populations and ecosystems, and thus an increasingly polarized world order. The author challenges us to reconceptualize the machine—'industrial technomass'—as a species of power and a problem of culture. He shows how economic anthropology has the tools to deconstruct the concepts of production, money capital, and market exchange, and to analyze capital accumulation as a problem at the very interface of the natural and social sciences. His analysis provides an alternative understanding of economic growth and technological development. Hornborg's work is essential for researchers in anthropology, human ecology, economics, political economy, world-systems theory, environmental justice, and science and technology studies. Find out more about the author at the Lund University, Sweden web site.