Inequality and Economic History

Lecture series : Inequality and… ?

LISER together with many partners in Luxembourg co-organizes the following lecture.

Recent research in economic history has unearthed previously unknown facts about the long-term trends in inequality. We now have, for at least some areas of Europe, time series of key inequality indicators from ca. 1300. These new data are changing the way in which we perceive economic inequality not only in the past, but even today – as a key lesson from history, is that economic inequality (especially, but not only, of wealth) has a marked tendency for increasing over time, and only catastrophes on the scale of the Black Death or the World Wars managed to bring it down, albeit temporarily. This lecture will provide an overview of these recent acquisitions, and will debate why they are relevant for current debates.

Speaker

Prof. Guido Alfani, Università Bocconi