From Center for Global Development
The World is not Flat: Inequality and Injustice in
our Global Economy
By Nancy
Birdsall - 10/31/2005
 In
the 2005 WIDER Annual Lecture, “The
World is not Flat: Inequality and Injustice in our Global
Economy” (PDF), CGD President Nancy
Birdsall addresses the challenge that global inequality
poses for managing globalization so that it works for the
developing world. She first argues that inequality matters to
people. Moreover, in developing countries, where markets and
politics are far-from-perfect, inequality can be destructive,
reducing prospects for growth, poverty reduction, and good
government. She then turns to a fundamental problem of
globalization--that it is asymmetric, i.e. that it benefits the
rich more than the poor, both within and across countries.
Birdsall argues that the world is not flat as argued by New York
Times columnist Thomas Friedman. Rather, what appears to be a
level playing field to people on the surface is actually a field
full of craters in which poor people and poor countries are
stuck. Birdsall discusses the implications of these craters for
shared prosperity, global security, and global social justice.
She concludes by suggesting steps for addressing the core
problem: We have a global economy but no effective global
polity.
In the accompanying article Rising
Inequality in the New Global Economy (PDF) Nancy Birdsall
argues that globalization is disequalizing, rewarding the
already rich while leaving the poor behind, and that we need a
global polity to address the asymmetric impacts of
globalization.
Download slides from the lecture "Why
Inequality Matters in a Globalizing World" (PDF, 580KB)
delivered October 26, 2005 at the World
Institute for Development Economic Research (WIDER) in
Helsinki, Finland
The lecture draws upon the following previously
released CGD publications:
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