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The Economic Impact and Cause of Income Inequality

University of Greenwich

Park Row, London SE10 9LS
Room: King William Court room KW303
6 Dec 2017 5 p.m. – 7 p.m.

The Economic Impact and Causes of Income Inequality: the shifting views of the international financial institutions

The traditional view of much of the economics profession until the early 2000s was that income inequality was a normative issue about which economists could say little. The OECD and IFI thinking followed much the same logic. This shifted with the OECD publication "Growing Unequal"in 2008 and its subsequent publications "Divided We Stand" in 2011 and "In It Together: Why Less Inequality Benefits All" in 2015.

A series of studies form the IMF research department as well as the OECD went further in identifying the negative economic impact of rising income inequality in advanced economies over the past 25 years. Despite the growing evidence policy recommendations have not adjusted and in the case of the IMF policy has continued to insist on the dismantling of collective bargaining and wage setting machinery.

About John Evans

Evans has been directly involved in the debates at the economic institutions over the role of trade unions and wage setting since the early 1990s- his lecture will asess the evidence and trace what has been behind the shifts of thinking and what is still required to have a comprehensive strategy to reverse the rise in income inequality.


Organising committee

The event is part of the Big Picture Series of the University of Greenwich and it is co-organised by the Greenwich Political Economy Research Centre (GPERC) and the Foundation for European Progressive Studies (FEPS).