Branko Milanovic is a World Bank economist and development specialist. He's currently a visiting presidential professor at CUNY's Graduate Center and a senior scholar at the Luxembourg Income Study Center. His book, The Haves and the Have-Nots: A Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality

The soaring pay of corporate chief executives is spurring efforts to pass laws to limit their compensation and close the widening gap in earnings between workers and top executives. Such laws have been proposed in at least three states, including Massachusetts, as well as in Switzerland. Proponents

For a moment last week, it looked like Walmart CEOs were getting enlightened. The company promised to “ end minimum-wage pay” for its lowest-paid sales workers and touted a plan to ‘”invest in its associate base” and maybe even offer more bonus opportunities.

Six years after America sank into the deepest economic downturn since the 1930s, the jobless rate has fallen to 5.9 percent, the lowest since July 2008. But one demographic group — African-American men — seems to be stuck in a permanent recession.

How bad a problem is inequality? Are working-class people getting screwed? Should we raise taxes on the rich? Is the United States, in short, a fundamentally unfair place? These are the questions that keep awake policy analysts and fuel endless dinner-party debates. But there's one group that is not

A tool that will clarify and measure the way policy reinforces racial disparities.

This fall, I’ll be teaching some of the most financially distressed students in America.

Racial disparities in labor markets, wealth accumulation, and economic mobility persist even in the best economies as the legacy of past discrimination disadvantages people of color in transactions with ostensibly race-neutral rules.

I remember the stunned reaction of so many Americans back in the summer of 2005 when legions of poor black people in desperate circumstances seemed to have suddenly and inexplicably materialized in New Orleans during the flooding that followed Hurricane Katrina. Expressions of disbelief poured in

In New England, the Market Basket supermarkets are known for their low prices and friendly staff. But Market Basket's lines are short and the parking lot empty today, due to an a two-week old worker-led strike and an ongoing customer boycott.