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

13 March 2024
In response to recent interest, Branko Milanovic explores whether Burnham’s ideas have stood the test of time. Like everybody who has studied Marxism from a relatively young age I…
19 February 2024
Branko Milanovic on why the liberal project will fail. Several things came together. A friend sent me this post by N S Lyons. Then, independently, a short conversation on…
14 February 2024
The decline and fall of the print media. I was always in love with (in-print) newspapers. In the past you did not have to write “in print”. There were no other newspapers. Writing…
01 February 2024
Branko Milanovic revisits old classics to see what, if anything, they have to say now. Le hasard is a capricious master. When I recently travelled to China, I knew that I would…
15 January 2024
Branko Milanovic argues that placing the entirety of modern knowledge in the electronic format is dangerous. China is considered to have been the first country (…
13 December 2023
Branko Milanovic argues that we shouldn't waste time on the illusions of degrowth in a very poor and unequal world, and instead think about how the most emission-intensive goods…
30 November 2023
Branko Milanovic on why three global trends - runaway inflation, wrecking of democracy, and the rise of antisemitism - are dominating political conversations in Germany. I…
07 November 2023
Branko Milanovic explores new research on why there is no riding off into the sunset for dictators. In an interesting paper, Kaushik Basu discusses, using a mathematical model, an…
18 October 2023
Branko Milanovic with some words of advice for our polarised times. Over the years I have had political and ideological discussions with at least three groups of people and have…
03 October 2023
Branko Milanovic on why Vučić may go for war and the difficult position that would put NATO in. I learned about the newest dispute between Serbia and Kosovo in a New York café…
20 September 2023
Branko Milanovic explores the impact of the Cultural Revolutions of the 1960s-70 on himself, and the East and West. As I suppose many older people do, I was thinking about…
07 September 2023
Branko Milanovic argues that the BRICS countries' increasing independence and clout may be a net good for pressing global problems.  The expansion of BRICS membership is…
22 August 2023
Branko Milanovic explores what Adam Smith got wrong about the abolition of slavery. When I wrote my chapter on Adam Smith in The Visions of Inequality (to be published October 10…
10 August 2023
Equality: The History of an Elusive Idea by Darrin McMahon. Basic Books. 2023. The ideological history of the idea of equality (“Equality: The History of an Elusive Idea”) is an…
01 August 2023
Branko Milanovic discusses inequality, the great convergence, Ukraine and China.  What is your take on the riots that are going on in France at the moment?  …