What causes inequality? This book features an international discussion on the economic causes of inequality between nations and addresses the causes and effects of world inequality and its possible remedies.

Inequality has acquired the iconic status once accorded to Full Employment, Growth, and Inflation. It is not a new issue being a major preoccupation of welfare state literature and the development debates of the 1950s and intersects with debates among economic historians on The Great Divergence. The revivals of these two intersecting controversies go beyond a minor dispute on the margins of economics, to the heart of the question ‘how far can we trust the market?’

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of The Japanese Political Economy.