Foundation essay: This article is part of a series marking the launch of The Conversation in the US. Our foundation essays are longer than our usual comment and analysis articles and take a wider look…
A recently published study produced some revealing findings on beliefs about inequality in a range of countries around the world. The study, by Chulalongkorn University’s Sorapop Kiatpongsan and Harvard…
The financial struggles of a large number of African footballers earning wages at poverty levels in their home countries is an issue easily lost amid the high salaries and glamorous lifestyles of most…
The evidence is mounting about how regressive the UK tax system has become under the coalition government. Our work for the Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute (SPERI) highlighted how those…
Few academics can aspire to transcend university boundaries, reach deep into a mainstream audience and find Westminster’s doors opening, inviting conversation with politicians. Thomas Piketty is now one…
The role grammar schools should play in English education is still hotly contested, more so today than it has been in years. This is despite the fact that there are only 164 grammar schools operating in…
When FIFA awarded the 2014 World Cup finals to Brazil seven years ago, it looked as if the tournament would be a coming out party for the country. Now, the picture is far more mixed. It has become fashionable…
The economic and political focus is increasingly on the inequality of income and wealth as they both rise in Europe and the US. At a conference on Inclusive Capitalism held near the end of May at London’s…
Few economics books have caused quite the stir which accompanied the release of the English version of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty First Century. And there can be few who are not familiar with…
Since the 1950s, with a few rare exceptions in the 1970s, the middle class – all over the world – has been getting worse off. Specifically, the middle class’ purchasing power, as with that of the working…
“We are all in this together” has been one of George Osborne’s mantras. And it worked. Substantial parts of the public remain convinced that a noble, collective belt tightening was and remains the right…
Joe Hockey says that this budget shares the pain. But what is the right share for whom? This budget is like all the others – it lacks a compass that tells us the overall effect of government spending and…
Onur Tosun, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick
The global market for CEOs is highly competitive. Shareholders may not like it – and the general public might like it less – but that means British companies could and should be increasing the pay of the…
After two decades of democracy, economic inequality in South Africa remains very high. Survey comparability issues make analysing trends tricky, but it is clear that overall income inequality has not fallen…
Since the 1970s, economic orthodoxy has suggested that inequality might be the price worth paying for economic growth. Following a new report from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the evidence is…
The Conversation is running a series, Class in Australia, to identify, illuminate and debate its many manifestations. Here, Peter Whiteford investigates what has happened to income and wealth inequality…
Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, wants to change the way bankers get paid in order to discourage them from taking excessive risk or behaving badly. He has suggested that a big part of…
Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s address to the World Economic Forum in January delivered a plain, pragmatic message. The best remedy for the uneven recovery of the world economy, according to Abbott, is a…
One in three professional parents with children under 16 has moved their family to a new area solely because of the quality of its schools – and nearly a fifth have moved to be in a specific school’s catchment…