Discussion on "Inequality, Globalization and Democracy"

On March 13, our Institute, the Department of Economics, and the Institute of Financial Economics (IFE) at the American University of Beirut, hosted a discussion on "Inequality, Globalization and Democracy" with Branko Milanovic, a leading expert on global inequality, and Ishac Diwan, IFI Associate Fellow and Professor of Economics at AUB. 

About the Speakers
Branko Milanovic is a research professor at the Graduate Center, City University of New York and senior scholar at The Stone Center on Socio-economic Inequality; Visiting Professor at the Institute for International Inequalities at LSE; was lead economist in World Bank Research Department for almost 20 years and senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. Milanovic’s main area of work is income inequality, in individual countries and globally, as well as historically among pre-industrial societies. His most recent books are Global inequality: a new approach for the age of globalization which deals with economic and political issues of globalization, and Capitalism, alone that contrasts inequality and class formation in societies of liberal and political capitalism. In October 2023, he published Visions of Inequality that looks at how income distribution was studied by the most famous economists over the past 200 years. Milanovic was awarded (jointly with Mariana Mazzucato) the 2018 Leontieff Prize.

Ishac Diwan is a Professor of Practice in Economics at the American University of Beirut since 2024 and an IFI Associate Fellow. He is also the Research Director of the Finance for Development Lab at the Paris School of Economics, and in charge of the Political Economy program of the Economic Research Forum, an association of Middle East social scientists. Ishac has held in recent years teaching positions at Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, Columbia University, School for International Public Affairs, and at the Harvard Kennedy School. Ishac received his PhD in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley. He taught international finance at the New York University’s Business School before joining the World Bank, working in the Research Complex (1987-1992), the Middle East department (1992-1996), and the World Bank Institute (1996-2002). He was the World Bank’s Country Director for East (2002-2007), and then West Africa (2007-2011).