Milanovic, Branko 1953-

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Milanovic, Branko 1953-

PERSONAL:

Born October 24, 1953. Education: Florida State University, M.S.; Belgrade University, Ph.D., 1987.

ADDRESSES:

CAREER:

World Bank, country economist for Poland, 1988-91, and lead economist in research department. Research fellow, Institute of Economic Sciences, Belgrade, Yugoslavia (now Slovenia), 1980-83, 1986-88. Visiting professor, Johns Hopkins University, School for Advanced International Studies, 1996—, and University of Maryland. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Global Policy Program, formerly senior associate, currently associate scholar.

WRITINGS:

Export Incentives and Turkish Manufactured Exports, 1980-1984, World Bank (Washington, DC), 1986.

Jugoslovenska privreda izmdu stagnacije i razvoja, Institute of Economic Sciences (Belgrade, Yugoslavia), 1986.

Liberalization and Entrepreneurship: Dynamics of Reform in Socialism and Capitalism, M.E. Sharpe (Armonk, NY), 1989.

Ekonomska nejednakost u Jugoslaviji, Ekonomika/Institute of Economic Sciences (Belgrade, Yugoslavia), 1990.

The Transition from Socialism in Eastern Europe: Domestic Restructuring and Foreign Trade, World Bank (Washington, DC), 1992.

Distributional Impact of Cash and In-Kind Social Transfers in Eastern Europe and Russia, World Bank (Washington, DC), 1992.

Cash Social Transfers, Direct Taxes, and Income Distribution in Late Socialism, World Bank (Washington, DC), 1993.

Social Costs of the Transition to Capitalism: Poland, 1990-91, Transition and Macro-Adjustment, World Bank (Washington, DC), 1993.

Transfers and the Transition from Socialism: Key Tradeoffs, World Bank (Washington, DC), 1994.

Protiv nacizma, Radio B92 (Belgrade, Serbia), 1994.

Determinants of Cross-Country Income Inequality: An "Augmented" Kuznets' Hypothesis, World Bank (Washington, DC), 1994.

Poverty, Inequality, and Social Policy in Transition Economies, World Bank (Washington, DC), 1995.

Nations, Conglomerates, and Empires: Trade-Off between Income and Sovereignty, World Bank (Washington, DC), 1996.

Explaining the Increase in Inequality during the Transition, World Bank (Washington, DC), 1998.

Poverty and Economic Transition: How Do Changes in Economies of Scale Affect Poverty Rates of Different Households?, World Bank (Washington, DC), 1998.

Income, Inequality, and Poverty during the Transition from Planned to Market Economy, World Bank (Washington, DC), 1998.

Change in the Perception of the Poverty Line during the Times of Depression: Russia, 1993-96, World Bank (Washington, DC), 1999.

Poverty and Social Assistance in Transition Countries, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2000.

Dividing the Spoils Pensions, Privatization, and Reform in Russia's Transition, World Bank (Washington, DC), 2000.

Democracy and Income Inequality: An Empirical Analysis, World Bank (Washington, DC), 2001.

Decomposing World Income Distribution: Does the World Have a Middle Class?, World Bank (Washington, DC), 2001.

Can We Discern the Effect of Globalization on Income Distribution? Evidence from Household Budget Surveys, World Bank (Washington, DC), 2002.

Does Liberté = Éegalité? A Survey of the Empirical Links between Democracy and Inequality, World Bank (Washington, DC), 2002.

When Markets Fail: Social Policy and Economic Reform, Russell Sage Foundation (New York, NY), 2002.

Income Convergence during the Disintegration of the World Economy, 1919-39, World Bank (Washington, DC), 2002.

Income and Influence: Social Policy in Emerging Market Economies, W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research (Kalamazoo, MI), 2003.

Is Inequality in Africa Really Different?, World Bank (Washington, DC), 2003.

Half a World: Regional Inequality in Five Great Federations, World Bank (Washington, DC), 2005.

Dataset—Racial Tension, Volume 6, World Bank (Washington, DC), 2005.

Worlds Apart: Measuring International and Global Inequality, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 2005.

Does Tariff Liberalization Increase Wage Inequality? Some Empirical Evidence, National Bureau of Economic Research (Cambridge, MA), 2005.

Global Income Inequality: What It Is and Why It Matters, World Bank (Washington, DC), 2006.

Measuring Ancient Inequality, National Bureau of Economic Research (Cambridge, MA), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

World Bank research economist Branko Milanovic began his career with the international financial organization in 1988, working as a country economist for Poland. During the early 1980s he held a position as a research fellow with the Institute of Economic Sciences in Belgrade, Yugoslavia (now Slovenia). Most recently he has also been working as a visiting professor in economics at Johns Hopkins University's School for Advanced International Studies, and at the University of Maryland. Milanovic was also named a senior associate for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Global Policy Program, and he still maintains a relationship as an associate scholar with the organization. He specializes in questions of income distribution, poverty, globalization, and the spread of democracy.

Milanovic's areas of specialization make him a respected authority in the area of post-Cold War economics. His study Income, Inequality, and Poverty during the Transition from Planned to Market Economy looks in detail at the economic issues that faced the former Soviet republics following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The Soviet Union operated as a planned economy: variables such as wages, profits, and interest rates were set by the central government, which changed them according to their political needs, rather than allowing them to adjust in accordance to the changing market. The ex-Soviet states had to drop their planned economies and switch (or transition) to market-driven economics. The results, in many cases, were painful for workers, used to the guarantees of the old Soviet system. Milanovic found that, in the early period following the collapse, transition economies disproportionately worsened the economic situation in the most vulnerable areas of the economy. "The old adage ‘the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer’ seems to resonate with relevance for the ‘post-communist area’ of countries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union undergoing transitions to market economies," stated Kathleen Young in Europe-Asia Studies.

"Through analysis of household budget surveys," Young continued, "Milanovic examines not only the nature but the source of these dynamics in the transition period." "Chapter Two [of Income, Inequality, and Poverty during the Transition from Planned to Market Economy] describes the way it was before the tectonic changes, with most income being earned in the state sector, non-existent unemployment, relatively high family allowances, a compressed wage band, and collective consumption being important," declared Bob Deacon, writing for the Journal of Development Studies. "Chapter Three charts the great depression of 1990 to 1995 and compares this with the inter-war depression in the USA and Europe, showing the experience of Russia in particular to be far more severe than the earlier USA experience. Real per capita income declined between 1988 and 1993 by fifty-four percent in the Slavic republics including Russia." This meant that the process of democratization in Russia made poor people even poorer, while at the same time eliminating the safeguards the Soviet Union had put in place. Instead of democratization making things fairer for these individuals, it left them worse off—a state of affairs that helps explain the rise to power of charismatic leaders like Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, who promoted the memory of the old-style Soviet system to great political effect. "This book," Deacon concluded, "is to be highly recommended as a model of the use of sound analysis of empirical data to inform intelligent discussion of transnational and national social policy options."

The question of how to judge economic differences on a worldwide scale is at the heart of Worlds Apart: Measuring International and Global Inequality. Milanovic addressed this issue in an interview for the Multinational Monitor. He explained that answering the question requires defining the term "individual"—in other words, to decide whether we should count differences between countries or between individuals. "If we treat every country as a unit," Milanovic stated, "the differences between mean incomes of the countries are unambiguously rising over the last twenty years, and even over the last fifty years. In other words, countries are diverging." Generally, rich countries are getting richer and poor countries are getting poorer. On the other hand, the World Bank economist continued, "if … we treat each country as a unit but give a weight to each country equal to its population, then inequality has been declining over the last twenty years." This can be explained by the economic boom the world's two most populous countries—China and India—have experienced since the late 1980s. Because they have the bulk of the world's population, the two countries skew the figures, showing general income levels for poor people are rising (on a national level, at least). By using household income drawn from more than one hundred different countries, Milanovic was able to derive meaningful figures about levels of income across the world. "One of the main conclusions of [Worlds Apart] is that global inequality … stood at a high level in 1988," explained Camelia Minoiu, writing for Ethics & International Affairs. "It rose between 1988 and 1993 … and fell … by 1998." "If one thinks of the world as a single country," Minoiu continued, "these findings suggest that the world is as unequal as some of the most unequal societies—such as Brazil and South Africa."

But the figures everyone is most interested in are the ones that compare individuals worldwide, which can be done by adjusting gross figures to compensate for differences in commodities prices in different countries. For individuals measured globally, Milanovic told the Multinational Monitor reviewer that "we can say that inequality is extremely high. Everybody agrees on that." According to the Princeton University Press Web site, the richest five percent of the world's population controls one-third of the planet's wealth—the same amount as the poorest eighty percent. "It is more difficult to say whether [global inequality] is rising," Milanovic continued. "I think that the preponderance of evidence is that it is slightly increasing or that it displays no clear trend over the last twenty years." "Overall, I think there is a movement toward some redistributive scheme at the world level," the economist concluded. "However, redistribution at the world level cannot be a substitute for normal economics. Greater opportunity to benefit from international trade and technology is key for poor countries' development. This will not happen until the current rules of the game, often determined by the rich world alone, are changed."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Milanovic, Branko Worlds Apart: Measuring International and Global Inequality, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 2005.

PERIODICALS

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, July 1, 1998, M. Bornstein, review of Income, Inequality, and Poverty during the Transition from Planned to Market Economy; September 1, 2000, H.D. Renning, review of Poverty and Social Assistance in Transition Countries, p. 180; November 1, 2005, H.I. Liebling, review of Worlds Apart, p. 539.

Comparative Economic Studies, winter, 1990, Susan J. Linz, review of Liberalization and Entrepreneurship: Dynamics of Reform in Socialism and Capitalism, p. 117.

Contemporary Sociology, January 1, 2007, Matthew C. Mahutga, review of Worlds Apart, p. 90.

De Economist, June, 1999, I. Wahab, review of Income, Inequality, and Poverty during the Transition from Planned to Market Economy, p. 245.

Economic Journal, November 1, 1999, Chris Doyle, review of Income, Inequality, and Poverty during the Transition from Planned to Market Economy, p. 830.

Ethics & International Affairs, March 1, 2006, Camelia Minoiu, review of Worlds Apart, p. 128.

Europe-Asia Studies, June 1, 1999, Kathleen Young, review of Income, Inequality, and Poverty during the Transition from Planned to Market Economy, p. 717; December 1, 2001, Robert Geisler, review of Poverty and Social Assistance in Transition Countries, p. 1262.

Futurist, September 1, 2003, "Public Policy."

International Affairs, April 1, 1991, George Blazyca, review of Liberalization and Entrepreneurship, p. 339.

International Review of Social History, August 1, 2007, review of Worlds Apart, p. 327.

Journal of Comparative Economics, December 1, 1991, Kazimierz Poznanski, review of Liberalization and Entrepreneurship, p. 720; June 1, 1995, Laszlo Csaba, review of The Transition from Socialism in Eastern Europe: Domestic Restructuring and Foreign Trade, p. 378; September 1, 1999, Martin Raiser, review of Income, Inequality, and Poverty during the Transition from Planned to Market Economy, p. 586.

Journal of Development Studies, August 1, 1998, Bob Deacon, review of Income, Inequality, and Poverty during the Transition from Planned to Market Economy, p. 155.

Journal of Economic Literature, June 1, 1990, review of Liberalization and Entrepreneurship, p. 744; September 1, 1998, review of Income, Inequality, and Poverty during the Transition from Planned to Market Economy, p. 1552; September 1, 1999, Andres Aslund, review of Income, Inequality, and Poverty during the Transition from Planned to Market Economy, p. 1187; March 1, 2003, Paul Glewwe, review of Poverty and Social Assistance in Transition Countries, p. 231; December 1, 2003, review of Income and Influence: Social Policy in Emerging Market Economies, p. 1380; December 1, 2005, review of Worlds Apart, p. 1097.

Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare, March 1, 2001, review of Poverty and Social Assistance in Transition Countries, p. 178.

Kyklos, summer, 1999, Gerold Blumle, review of Income, Inequality, and Poverty during the Transition from Planned to Market Economy, p. 283.

Manchester School of Economic and Social Studies, June 1, 1990, Martin Cave, review of Liberalization and Entrepreneurship, p. 198.

Multinational Monitor, July 1, 2003, "Inequality in the World Economy—by the Numbers," author interview.

Reference & Research Book News, February 1, 1990, review of Liberalization and Entrepreneurship, p. 15.

Slavic Review, summer, 1993, Ben Slay, "Liberalism and Entrepreneurship," p. 374.

Times Higher Education Supplement, January 20, 2006, "War and Peace and Prosperity," p. 31.