2002) ‘’Globalization and the great U-turn: income inequality trends in 16

The debate on the resurgence of income inequality in some advanced industrial societies has often focused on the impact of an increasingly integrated world economy, typified by growing capital mobility, heightened international competition, and an increase in migration. This study represents one of the first systematic, cross-national ex-aminations of the role of globalization in the inequality “U-turn.” Results indicate, on the one hand, that total inequality variation is principally affected by the percentage of the labor force in agricul-ture, followed by the institutional factors union density and decom-modification, and only then by globalization. On the other hand, longitudinal variation in inequality, while still dominated by the percentage of the labor force in agriculture, is also principally af-fected by aspects of globalization, such as southern import penetra-tion and direct investment outflow, and to a lesser extent by mi-gration. In other words, globalization explains the longitudinal trend of increasing inequality that took place within many industrial coun-tries better than it does cross-sectional inequality differences among countries. The recent resurgence of income inequality in a number of advanced industrial societies has spawned a wide-ranging debate as to the causes. A recurring theme has been the impact on inequality of an increasingl