Inequality, Global

To a significant extent, studies of global inequality have focused on measuring the evolution of convergence and divergence between nations. For some, inequality between nations began to stabilize around the middle of the twentieth century, and there was considerable convergence between nations thereafter. Such assessments, knowingly or not, draw significantly from the long‐established paradigm of modernization. To different extents, the notion that the market has been a key arena for the unfolding of unequal exchange, and that unequal exchange has constituted the main force shaping inequalities between core and peripheral nations, has been central to many critical perspectives on inequalities between nations, particularly those that tend to see inequality primarily as the outcome of exploitation. When focusing only on wealthy nations, as is the practice of most of the social sciences, the institutional arrangements of wealthier nations indeed appear, as in the eyes of Acemoglu and Robinson, to be characterized primarily by inclusion.