Visions of Inequality

A timely book that brings the weight of the past to bear on one of the most pressing issues of our time…Milanovic is a clear and direct writer, unafraid of making strong judgements and with an idiosyncratic eye for detail. That makes for original, and sometimes amusingly wry, revelations. – Darrin M. McMahon * Literary Review *Inequality is back, as a political topic and as a focus of study. In this fascinating book, Milanovic, one of the world’s most influential scholars of inequality, examines what leading economists of the past have had to say on this issue. – Martin Wolf * Financial Times *A history of the changing ways economists have broached the subject [of inequality] since the French Revolution…[Milanovic] describes how Western economists were in thrall to an unholy combination of extremely simplistic assumptions and extremely complex mathematical models. – Jennifer Szalai * New York Times *A work of art in today’s economics. With equal intensity, the book traverses contemporary ideological, political, and social divides and implores theoretical and empirical economists to critically assess their intellectual positions…An essential and insightful analysis of the history of economic inequality urgently relevant today…a groundbreaking work, bound to influence the economics profession and our worldview. – Aleksandr V. Gevorkyan * LSE Review of Books *An in-depth contextual analysis of how economic minds from Adam Smith to Karl Marx have shaped our understanding of class, income and wealth…This is a vital reference for the economic and philosophical theories underpinning our understanding of inequality today. – Tej Parikh * Financial Times *An absorbing account of how thinking about inequality has evolved…Milanovic mixes his methodical examination of the evolution of economic thought about inequality with fascinating portraits of great economists and the society and polity of their times. – Zia Qureshi * Finance & Development *For anybody interested in inequality—and we all should be—anything by Milanovic is an essential read…This book is a great scene setter for the modern debate, not least in illustrating the link between ideas of inequality and the times in which ideas are formed. – Diane Coyle * Enlightened Economist *‘To remind us of the half-forgotten ways in which class can be integrated into the big economic picture, Milanovic takes us on a guided tour of six minds, spanning 200 years. The chapters blend tight analysis of how each thinker understood the forces reshaping inequality in their day with gobbets of gossip…[The author’s] judgments…are arrestingly fresh. – Tom Clark * Prospect Magazine *Steps back to question the study of inequality itself. Where does this work come from? Was inequality always so central a preoccupation for economists — or in politics at large? Ultimately, the book reveals the limits of a purely economic framing of these questions…a breezy tour d’horizon of economic conceptions of inequality since the Enlightenment. – Simon Torracinta * Dissent *A captivating journey through the time of ideas, with an impact on current events. – Julien Damon * Les Echoes *By…exploring the different ways inequality has been conceptualized, [Milanovic] prompts us to consider the political ramifications of our restricted focus on inter-individual distribution. – Daniel Zamora * Commonweal *Fully respond[s] to the Nobel laureate Angus Deaton’s call for economists to return to ‘serving society’…By offering a compelling account of how a bunch of past economists discussed income distribution, [this book]…shows to what extent an historically contextualised analysis of inequality is relevant today. – Cosma Orsi * History of Economic Thought and Policy *

A fascinating book that I highly recommend reading from an original thinker…of invaluable value andwill rank as a classic.

Branko Milanovic is Senior Scholar at the Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality at the City University of New York and Visiting Professor at the International Inequalities Institute at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Formerly Lead Economist in the World Bank’s research department, he is the author of Capitalism, Alone; and The Haves and the Have-Nots.